






“ YouVe ‘ it.’ 1*11 git the trunk at Kalamazoo.” 


AT 

CLOSE RANGE 


F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

ILLUSTRATED 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK:;::::::::::::::::1906 



Copyright, 1905, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

Published, March, 1905 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTINQ AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 


To my Readers: 

On my writing-table lies a magnifying-glass the 
size of an old watch crystal, which helps me to 
understand the mechanism of many interesting 
things. With it I decipher at close range such 
finger-work as the cutting of intaglios, the brush- 
marks on miniatures, or perhaps the intricate fus- 
ings of metals in the sword-guard of a Samurai. 

At the same close range I try to search the 
secret places of the many minds and hearts which 
in my nomadic life cross my path. In these mag- 
nifyings and probings the unexpected is ofttimes 
revealed : tenderness hiding behind suspected cru- 
elty; refinement under assumed coarseness; the joy 
of giving forcing its way through thick crusts of 
pretended avarice. 

The results confirm my theory, that at the bot- 
tom of every heart-crucible choked with life’s cin- 
ders there can almost always be found a drop of 
gold. 


150 E. 34th Street, New York. 


F. H. S. 


t 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 


A Night Out 3 

An Extra Blanket 39 

A Medal of Honor 67 

The Rajah of Bungpore 93 

The Soldo of the Castellani . . . .121 

A Point of Honor 147 

Simple Folk 177 

“ Old Sunshine ” 207 

A Pot of Jam 239 



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ILLUSTRATIONS 


^^YouWe HC ril get the trunk at Kalamazoo** 

Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

Heads and arms and legs made the passage of the 

aisles difficult 8 

Some young men . . . and four or Jive chorus girls 52 

The room became crorvded ivith Sains customers . 70 ^^ 

At his feet knelt two Hindu merchants displaying 


their wares l\2 

(Courtesy of Collier’s Weekly.) 

Over the white snow seaward • • 180 — 

(Courtesy of Collier’s Weekly.) 




A NIGHT OUT 




A NIGHT OUT 


Thoreau once spent the whole livelong night 
in the hush of the wilderness ; sitting alone, listen- 
ing to its sounds — the fall of a nut, the hoot of a 
distant owl, the ceaseless song of the frogs. 

This night of mine was spent in the open ; where 
men came and went and where the rush of many 
feet, and the babel of countless voices could be 
heard even in its stillest watches. 

In my wanderings up and down the land, speak- 
ing first in one city and then in another, often with 
long distances between, I have had the good fortune 
to enjoy many such nights. Some of them are filled 
with the most delightful memories of my life. 


The following telegram was handed me as I left 
the stage of the Opera House in Marshall, Mich., 
some months ago : 


3 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


‘‘Can you speak in Cleveland to-morrow after- 
noon at 2.30? Important. — ^Answer.” 

I looked at my watch. It was half past ten 
o’clock. Cleveland was two hundred miles away, and 
the Night Express to Toledo and the East, due in 
an hour, did not stop at Marshall. 

I jumped into a hack, sprang out at the hotel 
^ I 

entrance and corralled the clerk as he was leaving 
^ 

for the night. For some minutes we pored over a 
railway guide. This was the result : 

Leave Marshall at 1.40 a.m., make a short run 
up the road to Battle Creek, stay there until half 
past three, then back again through Marshall with- 
out stopping, to Jackson — lie over another hour 
and so on to Adrian and Toledo for breakfast, ar- 
riving at Cleveland at 11.30 the next morning. An 
all-night trip, of course, with changes so frequent 
as to preclude the possibility of sleep, but a per- 
fectly feasible one if the trains made reasonable 
time and connections. 

This despatch went over the wires in reply ; 

“Yes, weather permitting.” ^ 

To go upstairs and to bed and to be called in two 

4 


A NIGHT OUT 

hours wouldn’t pay for the trouble of undressing; 
better pick out the warm side of the stove, take two 
chairs and a paper two days old and kill time until 
one o’clock. I killed it alone — everybody having 
gone to sleep but the night porter, who was to 
telephone for the hack and assist with my luggage. 

It was a silent night. One of those white, cold, 
silent nights when everything seems frozen — ^the 
people as well as the ground; no wind, no sounds 
from barking dogs or tread of hoof or rumble of 
wheels. A light snow was falling — an unnoticed 
snow, for the porter and I were the only people 
awake; at eleven o’clock a few whirling flakes; at 
twelve o’clock an inch deep, packed fine as salt, and 
as hard ; at one o’clock three inches deep, smooth as 
a sheet and as unbroken; no furrow of wheels or 
slur of footstep. The people might have been in 
their graves and the snow their winding-shroud. 

“Hack’s ready, sir.” This from the porter, 
rubbing his eyes and stumbling along with my 
luggage. 

Into the hack again — same hack; it had been 
driven under the shed, making a night of it, too — 
5 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

my trunk with a red band outside with the driver, 
my fur overcoat and grip inside with me. 

There is nothing princely, now, about this coat; 
you wouldn’t be specially proud of it if you could 
see it — ^just a plain fur overcoat — an old friend 
really — and still is. On cold nights I put it next 
to the frozen side of the car when I am lying in my 
berth. Often it covers my bed when the ther- 
mometer has dropped to zero and below, and I am 
sleeping with my window up. It has had experi- 
ences, too, this fur coat ; a boy went home in it once 
with a broken leg, and his little sister rode with 
her arm around him, and once — ^but this isn’t the 
place to teU about it. 

From the hotel to the station the spools of the 
hack paid out two wabbly parallel threads, string- 
ing them around corners and into narrow streets 
and out again, so that the team could find its way 
back, perhaps. 

Another porter now met me — ^not sleepy this 
time, but very much awake; a big fellow in a 
jumper, with a number on his cap, who caught the 
red-handed trunk by the handle and “yanked” it 
6 


A NIGHT OUT 


(admirable word this!) on to the platform, shout- 
ing out in the same breath, “Cleveland via Battle 
Creek — no extras!” 

Then came the shriek of the incoming train — 
a local bound for Battle Creek and beyond. Two 
cars on this train, a passenger and a smoker. I 
lugged the fur overcoat and grip up the snow- 
clogged steps and entered the smoker. No Pull- 
man on these locals, and, of course, no porter, and 
travellers, therefore, did their own hfting and 
lugging. 

The view down the perspective of this smoker was 
like a view across a battle-field, the long slanting 
lines of smoke telling of the carnage. Bodies (dead 
with sleep ) were lying in every conceivable position, 
with legs and arms thrust up as if the victims had 
died in agony ; some face down ; others with g^ing 
mouths and heads hooked across the seats. These 
heads and arms and legs made the passage of the 
aisle difficult. One — a leg — got tangled in my 
overcoat, and the head belonging to it said with a 
groan : 

“Where in h — - are you goin’ with that ” 

7 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

But I did not stop. I kept on my way to the 
passenger coach. It was not my fault that no 
Pullman with a porter attached was run on this 
local. 

There was no smoke in this coach. Neither was 
there any heat. There was nothing that could 
cause it. Something had happened, perhaps to the 
coupling of the steam hose so that it wouldn’t 
couple ; or the bottom was out of the hollow mock- 
ery called a heater; or the coal had been held up. 
Whatever the cause, a freight shed was a palm 
garden beside it. Nor had it any signs of a battle- 
field. It looked more like a ward in a hospital with 
most of the beds empty. Only one or two were occu- 
pied; one by a baby and another by its mother — 
the woman on one seat, her hand across the body 
of the child, and both fast asleep, one little bare 
foot peeping out from beneath the shawl that cov- 
ered the child, like a pink flower a-bloom in a desert. 

I can always get along in a cold car. It is a hot 
-S • 

one that incites me to murder the porter or the 
brakeman. I took off the coat I was wearing and 
laid it fiat on a seat. Then came a layer of myself 



Heads and arms and legs made the passage of the aisle difficult 





A NIGHT OUT 

with the grip for a pillow, and then a top crust of 
my old friend. They might have knocked out the 
end of the car now and I should have been com- 
fortable. Not to sleep — forty minutes wouldn’t be 
of the slightest service to a night watchman, let 
alone an all-night traveller — but so as to be out of 
the way of porterless-passengers lugging grips. 

The weather now took a hand in the game. The 
cold grew more intense, creeping stealthily along, 
blowing its frosty breath on the windows ; so dense 
on some panes that the lights of the stations no 
longer shone clear, but were blurred, like lamps in 
a fog. The incoming passengers felt it and stamped 
their feet, shedding the snow from their boots. Now 
and then some^^ayeller, colder than his fellow, 
stopped at the fraudulent heater to warm his fingers 
before finding ^Tseatpand, strange to say, passed 
on satisfied — due to his heated imagination, no 
doubt. 

The blanket of white was now six inches thick, 
and increasing every minute. The wind was still 
asleep. 

“Guess we’re in for it,” said the conductor to a 

9 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
ticket stuck in the hat of a man seated in front. “I 
hear No. 6 is stalled chuck-a-block this side of 
Schoolcraft. We’ll make Battle Creek anyway, 
and as much furder as we can get, but there ain’t 
no tellin’ where we’ll bring up.” 

I thrust my ticket hand through the crust of my 
overcoat and the steel nippers perforated the bit 
of cardboard with a click. I was undisturbed. 
Battle Creek was where I was to get olf ; what 
became of the train after that was no affair of 
mine. 

Only one thing worried me as I lay curled up like 
a cocoon. Was there a hotel at Battle Creek within 
reasonable distance (walking, of course; no hack 
would be out a night like this), with a warm side to 
its stove and two more chairs in which I could pass 
the time of my stay, or would there be only the 
railroad station — and if the last, what sort of a 
railroad station!’ — one of those bare, varnished, 
steam-heated affairs with a weighing machine in one 
comer and a slot machine in the other.? or a less 
modern chamber of horrors with the seats divided 
by iron arms — instruments of torture for tired, 
10 


A NIGHT OUT 

sleepy men which must have been devised in the 
Middle Ages ? 

The wind now awoke with a howl, kicked off its 
counterpane and started out on a career of its own. 
Ventilators began to rattle; incoming passengers 
entered with hands on their hats; outgoing pas- 
sengers had theirs whipped from their heads before 
they touched the platforms of the stations. The 
conductor as he passed shook his head ominously : 

“ Goin’ to be a ring-tailed roarer,” he said to a 
man in the aisle whose face was tied up in a shawl 
with the ends knotted on top of his cap, like a boy 
with the toothache. “Cold enough to freeze the 
rivets in the b’iler. Be wuss by daylight.” 

“Will we make Battle Creek?” I asked, lifting 
my head from the grip. 

“Yes; be there in two minutes. He’s blowin’ for 
* her now.” 

Before the brakeman had tightened his clutch 
on his brake I was on my feet, had shifted over- 
coats, and was leaning against the fraudulent 
heater ready to face the storm. 

It would have been a far-seeing eye that could 

11 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
have discovered a hotel. All I saw as I dropped to 
the snow-covered platform was a row of gas jets, 
a lone figure pushing a truck piled up with lug- 
gage, one arm across his face to shield it from the 
cutting snow, and above me the gray mass of the 
station, its roof lost in the gloom of the wintry 
night. Then an unencumbered passenger, more 
active than I, passed me up the wind-swept plat- 
form, pushed open a door, and he and I stepped 
into — What did I step into? Well, it would be 
impossible for you to imagine, and so I will tell 
you in a new paragraph. 

I stepped into a little gem of a station, looking 
like a library without its books, covered by a low 
roof, pierced by quaint windows and fitted with 
a big, deep, all-embracing fireplace ablaze with 
crackling logs resting on old-fashioned iron dogs, 
and beside them on the hearth a huge pile of birch 
wood. A room once seen never to be forgotten — a 
cosey box of a place, full of curved alcoves and half- 
round recesses with still smaller windows, and a 
table bearing a silver-plated ice-pitcher and two 
silver-plated goblets, unchained (really, I am tell- 


A NIGHT OUT 

ing the truth), and big easy chairs, five or six of 
them, some of wicker-work with cushions, and a 
straw lounge big enough and long enough to 
stretch out on at full length. All this, remember, 
from out a night savage as a pack of wolves, and 
quite a thousand miles from home. 

I gravitated instinctively toward the fire, threw 
my overcoat and grip on the lounge and looked 
about me. The one passenger besides myself tarried 
long enough at the ticket office to speak to the 
clerk, and then passed on through the other door. 
He lived here, perhaps, or preferred the hotel — 
wherever that was — to the comforts of the station. 

The ticket-clerk locked his office, looked over to 
where I stood with my back to the blazing fire, my 
eyes roving around the room, and called out : 

“I’m going home now. Hotel’s only three blocks 
away.” 

“When is the down train due.?” I asked. 

“Three-thirty.” 

“Will it be on time.?” 

“Never stole it. Search me! May be an hour 
late ; may be two,” he added with a laugh. 

13 


“I’ll stay here, if you don’t min^^ 

“Course — glad to have you. You’ll want more 
wood, though. . . . John!” — ^this to the man 

who had been pushing the truck — “ bring in some 
more wood; man’s going to stay here for No. 8. 
Good-night.” And he shut the door and went out 
into the storm, his coat-sleeve across his face. 

John appeared and dropped an armful of clean 
split silver-backed birch logs in a heap on the 
hearth, remarking as he bobbed his head good- 
night, “Guess you won’t freeze,” and left by the 
same exit as the clerk, a breath of the North Pole 
being puffed into the cosey room as he opened and 
shut the door. 

There are times when to me it is a delight to be 
left alone. I invariably experience it when I am 
sketching. I often have this feeling, too, when my 
study door is shut and I am alone with my work and 
books. I had it in an increased degree this night, 
with the snow drifting outside, the wind fingering 
around the windows seeking for an entrance, and 
the whole world sound asleep except myself. It 
seemed good to be alone in the white stillness. 
U 


A NIGHT OUT 

What difference did the time of night make, or the 
place, or the storm, or the morrow and what it 
might bring, so long as I could repeat in a measure 
the comforts and privacy of my own dear den at 
home? 

I began to put my house in order. The table 
with the pitcher and goblets was drawn up by the 
side of the sofa; two easy chairs moved into posi- 
tion, one for my feet and one for my back, where 
the overhanging electric light would fall conven- 
iently, and another log thrown on the fire, sending 
the crisp blazing sparks upward. My fur over- 
coat was next hung over the chair with the fur side 
out, the grip opened, and the several comforts one 
always carries were fished out and laid beside the ice- 
pitcher — my flask of Private Stock, a collar-box 
full of cigars, some books and a bundle of proof 
with a special delivery stamp — ^proofs that should 
have been revised and mailed two days before. 
These last were placed within reach of my hand. 

When all was in order for the master of the 
house to take his ease, I unscrewed the top of the 
flask, and with the help of the pitcher and the gob- 
15 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
let compounded a comfort. Then I lighted a cigar 
and began a tour of the room. The windows were 
banked up with the drift ; through the half-blinded 
panes I could see the flickering gas jets and on the 
snow below them the disks of white light. Beyond 
these stretched a ruling of tracks edged by a bor- 
dering of empty yard-cars, then a waste of white 
ending in gloom. The. only sounds were the creak- 
ing of the depot signs swaying in the wind and the 
crackle of the logs on my hearth — mkie now in the 
isolation, as was everything else about me. Next I 
looked between the wooden spindles of the fenced-in 
ticket office, and saw where the clerk worked and 
how he kept his pens racked up and the hook on 
which he hung his hat and coat, and near it the 
news-stand locked tight, only the book posters show- 
ing over the top, and so on back to my fire and into 
my fur-lined throne. Then, with a sip of P. S., I 
picked up my proof sheets and began to work. 

Before I had corrected my first galley my ear 
caught the sound of stamping feet outside. Some 
early train-hand, perhaps, or porter, or some pas- 
senger who had misread the schedule; for nothing 
16 


A NIGHT OUT 


up or down was to pass the station except, perhaps, 
a belated freight. Then the door was burst open, 
and a voice as crisp as the gust of wind that ush- 
ered it in called out : 

“ Well, begorra ! ye look as snug as a bug in a 
rug. What d’ye think of this for a night.?” 

He was approaching the fire now, shaking the 
snow from his uniform and beating his hands to- 
gether as he walked. 

I have a language adapted to policemen and their 
kind, and I invariably use it when occasion olfers. 
Strange to say, my delight at being alone had now 
lost its edge. 

“Corker, isn’t it.?” I answered. “Draw up a 
chair and make yourself comfortable.” 

“Well, I don’t care if I do. By Jiminy! I 
thought the ears of me would freeze as I come 
acrost the yard. What are ye waitin’ for — the 
3 . 30 .?” 

“I am. Here, take a nip of this,” and I handed 
him the other goblet and pushed the P. S. his way. 
Corrupting the Force, I know, but then consider the 
temptation, and the fact that I was stranded on a 
17 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
lone isle of the sea, or adrift on a detached ice floe 
(that’s a better simile), and he the only other 
human being within reach. 

He raised the flask to his eye, noted the flow line, 
poured out three fingers, added one finger of water, 
said “How!” and emptied the mixture into his 
person. Then I handed him a cigar, laid aside my 
proofs and began to talk. I not only had a fire and 
a pile of wood, with something to smoke and 
enough P. S. for two, but I had a friend to enjoy 
them with me. Marvellous place — ^this Battle Creek 1 

“Anything doing. I asked after the storm and 
the night had been discussed and my lighted match 
had kindled his cigar. 

“Only a couple o’ drunks lyin’ outside a j’int,” 
he answered, stretching his full length in the chair. 

“Did you run ’em in.?*” 

“No, the station was some ways, so I tuk ’em 
inside. I know the feller that runs the j’int an’ the 
back dure was open — ” and he winked at me. 
“They’d froze if I’d left ’em in the drift. Wan had 
the ears of him purty blue as it wuz.” 

“Anything else.?” 


18 


A NIGHT OUT 


‘Well, there was a woman hollerin’ bloody 
murther back o’ the lumber yard, but I didn’t stop 
to luk her up. They’re alius raisin’ a muss up there 
— ^it was in thim tiniments. Ye know the place.” 
(He evidently took me for a resident or a rounder.) 
“Guess I’ll be joggin’ ’long” (here he rose to his 
feet), “my beat’s both sides of the depot an’ I 
daren’t stop long. Good luck to ye.” 

“Will you drop in again.?” 

“Yes, maybe I will,” and he opened the door 
and stepped out, his hand on his cap as the wind 
struck it. 

Half an hour passed. 

Then the cough of a distant locomotive, catching 
its breath in the teeth of the gale, followed by the 
rumbling of a heavily loaded train, growing louder 
as it approached, could be heard above the wail of 
the storm. 

When it arrived off my window I rose from my 
seat and looked out through the blurred glass. The 
breast of the locomotive was a bank of snow, the 
fronts and sides of the cars were plastered with the 
drift. The engineer’s head hung out of the cab win- 

19 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
dow, his eye on the swinging signal lights. Hud- 
dling close under the lee of the last box car 
I caught the outline of a brakeman, his cap pulled 
over his ears, his jacket buttoned tight. The train 
passed without stopping, the cough of the engine 
growing fainter and fainter as it was lost in the 
whirl of the gale. I regained my seat, lighted an- 
other cigar and picked up my proofs again. 

Another half hour passed. The world began to 
awake. 

First came the clerk with a cheery nod ; then the 
man who had brought in the wood and who walked 
straight toward the pile to see how much of it was 
left and whether I needed any more; then the lone 
passenger who had gone to the hotel and who was 
filled to the bursting point with profanity, and who 
emitted it in blue streaks of swear-words because 
of his accommodations; and last the policeman, 
beating his chest like a gorilla, the snow flying in 
every direction. 

The circle widened and another log was thrown 
on the crackling fire. More easy chairs were drawn 
up, the policeman in one and the clerk in another. 
W 


A NIGHT OUT 

Then the same old pantomime took place over the 
P. S. and the goblets, and the old collar-box had 
its lid lifted and did its duty bravely. The lone 
passenger, being ill-tempered and out of harmony 
with the surroundings, was not invited. (What 
a lot of fun the ill-tempered miss in this world of 
care!) 

Some talk of the road now followed, whether the 
Flyer would get through to Chicago, the clerk re- 
marking that No. 8 ought to arrive at 3.30, as it 
was a local and only came from Kalamazoo. Talk, 
too, of how long I would have to wait at Jackson, 
and what accommodations the train had, the clerk 
in an apologetic voice remarking, as he sipped his 
P. S., that it was a ‘^straight passenger,” with noth- 
ing aboard that would suit me. Talk of the town, 
the policeman saying that the woman was “bilin’ 
drunk” and he had to run both her and the old man 
in before the ‘Hiniment got quiet,” the lone pas- 
senger interpolating from his seat by the steam 
pipes that — But it’s just as well to omit what the 
lone passenger said, or this paper would never see 
the light. 



AT CLOSE 


RANGE 


At 3.30' the clerkjsprang from] his j^air. He had, 

t 'i 

with jii^ quick ear, caught the long-drawn-out 


shriek of No. 8 above the thrash of the storm. 

Into my overcoat again, in a hurry this time — 
everybody helping — the fur one, of course, the 
other on my arm — a handshake all round, out again 
into the whirl, the policeman carrying the grip; 
up a slant of snow on the steps of the cars — not a 
traveller’s foot had yet touched it, and into an 
ordinary passenger coach: all in less than two 
minutes — ^less time, in fact, than it would take to 
shift the scenery in a melodrama, and with as 
starthng results. 

No sleeping corpses here sprawled over seats, 
with arms and legs thrust up ; no mothers watched 
their children; no half-frozen travellers shivered 
beside ice-cold heaters. The car was warm, the lights 
burned cheerily, the seats were unlocked and faced 
both ways. 

Not many passengers either — only six besides 
myself at my end. Three of them were wearing 
picture hats the size of tea-trays, short skirts, and 
high shoes with red heels. The other three wore 
22 


A NIGHT OUT 

Derbies and the unmistakable garb of the average 
drummer. Each couple had a double seat all to 
themselves, and all six were shouting with laughter. 
Packed in the other end of the car were the usual 
collection of travellers seen on an owl train. 

I passed on toward the middle of the coach, 
turned a seat, and proceeded to camp for the night. 
The overcoat did service now as a seat cushion and 
the grip as a rest for my elbow. 

It soon became evident that the girls belonged to 
a troupe on their way to Detroit; that they had 
danced in Kalamazoo but a few hours before, had 
supped with the drummers, and had boarded the 
train at 2 . 50 . As their conversation was addressed 
to the circumambient air, there was no difficulty in 
my gaining these facts. If my grave and reverend 
presence acted as a damper on their hilarity, there 
was no evidence of it in their manner. 

‘‘Say, Liz,” cried the girl in the pink waist, “did 
you catch on to the — ” Here her head was tucked 
under the chin of the girl behind her. 

. “Oh, cut it out, Marne!” answered Liz. “Now, 
George, you stop !” This with a scream at one of 
23 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
the drummers, whose head had been thrust close to 
Marne’s ear in an attempt to listen. 

“Say, girls,” broke in another — they were all 
talking at once — “why, them fellers in the front 
seat went on awful ! I seen Sanders lookin’ and — ” 

“ Well, what if he did look? That guy ain’t — ” 
etc., etc. 

I began to realize now why the other passengers 
were packed together in the far end of the car. I 
broke camp and moved down their way. 

The train sped on. I busied myself studying 
the loops and curls of snow that the eddying wind 
was piling up in the cuts and opens, as they lay 
glistening under the glow of the lights streaming 
through the car windows; noting, too, here and 
there, a fence post standing alone where some curi- 
ous wind-fluke had scooped clear the drifts. 

Soon I began to speculate on the outcome of the 
trip. I had at best only three hours leeway 
between 11.30 a.m., the schedule time of arriving in 
Cleveland, and 2.30 p.m., the hour of my lecture — 
not much in a storm like this, with every train de- 
layed and the outlook worse every hour. 

24 


A NIGHT OUT 


At Albion the drummers got out, the girls wav- 
ing their hands at them through the frosted win- 
dows. When the jolly party of coryphees regained 
their seats, their regulation smiles, much to my sur- 
prise, had faded. Five minutes later, when I craned 
my neck to look at them, wondering why their 
boisterousness had ceased, the three had wrapped 
themselves up in their night cloaks and were fast 
asleep. The drummers, no doubt, forgot them as 
quickly. 

The conductor now came along and shook a 
sleepy man on the seat behind me into consciousness. 
He had a small leather case with him and looked 
like a doctor — ^was, probably; picked up above 
Battle Creek, no doubt, by a hurry call. He had 
been catching a nap while he could. Jackson was 
ten minutes away, so the conductor told the man. 

More stumbling down the snow-choked steps and 
plunging through drifts (it was too early yet for 
the yard shovellers), and I entered the depot at 
Jackson — ^my second stop on the way to Cleveland. 

No cry of delight escaped my lips as I pushed 
open the door. The Middle Ages have it all their 
25 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

own way at Jackson and still do unless the Battle 
Creek architect has since modernized the building. 
Nothing longer than a poodle or a six months’ 
old baby could stretch its length on these iron- 
divided seats^“Move on” must have been the watch- 
word, for libbody sat — not if they could help it. 
I tried it, spreading the overcoat between two of 
them, but the iron soon entered my soul, or rather 
my hip joints, and yet I am not over large. No 
open wood fire, of course, no easy chairs, no 
lounge; somebody might pass a few minutes in 
comfort if there were. There was a sign, I remem- 
ber, nailed up, reading “No loiterers allowed here,” 
an utterly useless affair, for nobody that I saw 
loitered. They “skedaddled” at once (that’s an- 
other expressive word, old as it is), and they failed 
to return until the next train came along. Then 
they gathered for a moment and again disap- 
peared. No, the station building at Jackson is not 
an enticing place — not after Battle Creek. 

And yet I was not unhappy. I had only an 
hour to wait — perhaps two — depending on the way 
the tracks were blocked. 


26 


A NIGHT OUT 


I unlocked the grip. There was nothing left 
of the P. S. — the policeman had seen to that ; and 
the collar-box was empty — the clerk had had a hand 
in that — two, if I remember. The proofs were fin- 
ished and ready to mail, and so I buttoned up my 
fur coat and went out into the night again in 
search of the post-box, tramping the platform 
where the wind had swept it clean. The crisp air. 
and the sting of the snow-flakes felt good to me/ 
Soon my eye fell on a lump tied up with^rope 
and half-buried in the snow. The up-train from 
Detroit had thrown out a bundle of the morning 
edition of the Detroit papers. I lugged it inside 
the station, brushed off the snow, dragged it to a 
seat beneath a flaring gas jet, cut the rope with my 
knife and took out two copies damp with snow. I 
was in touch with the world once more, whatever 
happened! I soon forgot the hardness of the seat 
and only became conscious that someone had entered 
the room when a voice startled me with : 

“Say, Boss I” 

I looked up over my paper and saw a boy with 
his head tied up in an old-fashioned tippet. He 

n 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
was blowing his breath on his fingers, his cheeks 
like two red apples. 

“Well, what is 

“How many poipers did ye swipe?” 

“Oh, are you the newsboy? Do these belong to 
you?” 

“You bet! How many ye got?” 

“Two.” 

“Ten cents. Boss. Thank ye,” and he shouldered 
the bundle and went out into the night, where a 
wagon was standing to receive it. 

“Level-headed boy,” I said to myself. “Be a 
millionaire if he lives. No back talk, no unneces- 
sary remarks regarding an inexcusable violation of 
the law — petty larceny if anything. Just a plain 
business statement, followed by an immediate cash 
settlement. A most estimable boy.” 

A road employee now came in, looked at the dull- 
faced clock on the wall, went out through a door 
and into a room where a telegraph instrument was 
clicking away, returned with a piece of chalk and 
wrote on a black-board: 

“No. 31 — 52 minutes late.” 


28 


A NIGHT OUT 


This handwriting on the wall had a Belshazzar- 
feast effect on me. If I lost the connection at 
Adrian, what would become of the lecture in Cleve- 
land.? 

Another man now entered carrying a black 
carpet-bag — a sleepy man with his hair tousled 
and who looked as if he had gone to bed in his 
clothes. He fumbled in his pocket for a key, went 
straight to the slot machine, unlocked it, disclosing 
a reduced stock of chewing-gum and chocolate cara- 
mels, opened his carpet-bag and filled the machine 
to the top. This sort of a man works at night, I 
thought, when few people are about. To uncover 
the mysteries of a slot machine before a gaping 
crowd would be as foolish and unprofitable as for 
a conjurer to show his patrons how he performed 
his tricks. 

I became conscious now, even as I turned the 
sheets of the journal, that while my flask of P. S. 
and the contents of my collar-box were admirable 
in their place, they were not capable of sustaining 
life, even had both receptacles been full, which they 
were not. There was evidently nothing to eat in 

29 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
the station, and from what I saw of the outside, no 
one had yet started a fire ; no one had even struck a 



At this moment a gas jet flashed its glare through 
a glass door to my right. I had seen this door, 
but supposed it led to the baggage-room — a fact 
that did not concern me in the least, for I had 
checked my red-handed trunk through to Cleveland. 
I got up and peered in. A stout woman in a hood, 
with a blanket shawl crossed over her bosom, its 
ends tied behind her back, was busying herself 
about a nickel-plated coffee-urn decorating one end 
of a long counter before which stood a row of high 
stools — the kind we sat on in school. I tried the 
knob of the door and walked in. 

“Is this the restaurant.?” 

“What would ye take it for — a morgue.?” she 
snapped out. 

“Can I get a cup of coffee.?” 

“No, ye can’t, not till six o’clock. And ye won’t 
git it then if somebody don’t turn out to help. 
Sittin’ up all night lally-gaggin’ and leavin’ a pile 
o’ dirty dishes for me to wash up. Look at ’em !” 


SO 


A NIGHT OUT 


“Who’s sitting up?” I inquired in a mild voice. 

“These Hadies* ” — this with infinite scorn — 
“that’s doin’ waitin’ for six dollars a week and what 
they kin pick up, and it’s my opinion they picks 
up more’n ’s good for ’em.” 

“And they make you do all the work?” 

“Well, ye’d think so if ye stayed ’round here.” 

“Can I help?” 

She had been swabbing down the counter as she 
talked, accentuating every sentence with an extra 
twist of her arm, the wash-cloth held tight be- 
tween her fingers. She stopped now and looked me 
squarely in the face. 

^^Help! What are you good for?” There was 
a tone of contempt in her voice. 

“Well, I’nl handy passing plates and cutting 
bread and pie. I’ve nothing to do till the train 
comes along. Try me a while.” 

“You don’t look like no waiter.” 

“But I am. I’ve been waiting on people all my 
life.” I had crawled under the counter now and 
was standing beside her. “Where will you have 
this ? ” and I picked up from a side table a dish of 
31 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
apples and oranges caged in a wire screen. I knew 
I was lost if I hesitated. 

“Lay ’em here,” she answered without a word of 
protest. I was not surprised. The big and bound- 
less West has no place for men ashamed to work 
with their hands. Only the week before, in Colorado 
Springs, I had dined at a house where the second 
son of a noble lord had delivered the family milk 
that same morning, he being the guest of honor. 
And then — I was hungry. 

The woman watched me put the finishing touches 
on the dish of fruit, and said in an altered tone, as 
if her misgivings had been satisfied : 

“Now, fill that bucket with water, will ye? The 
sink’s behind ye. I’ll start the coffee. And hereP^ 
and she handed me a key — “after ye fetch the 
water, unlock the refrigerator and bring me that 
ham and them baked beans.” 

Before the “ladies” had arrived — ^half an hour, 
in fact, before one of them had put in an appear- 
ance — I was seated at a small table covered with 
a clean cloth (I had set the table) with half a ham, 
a whole loaf of bread, a pitcher of milk that had 
32 


A NIGHT OUT 

been left outside in the snow and was full of lovely 
ice crystals, a smoking cup of coffee and a smoking 
pile of griddle cakes which the woman had com- 
pounded from the contents of two paper packages, 
and which she herself had cooked on a gas griddle 
— and very good cakes they were: total cost, as 
per schedule, fifty cents. 

Breakfast over, I again sought the seclusion of 
the Torture Chamber. The man with the piece of 
chalk had been kept busy. No. 31 was now one hour 
and forty-two minutes late. 

When it finally reached Jackson and I boarded 
it with my grip and overcoat, it looked as if it had 
run into a glacier somewhere up the road and had 
half a snowslide still clinging to its length. 

Day had broken now, and what light could sift 
its way through the falling flakes, shone cold and 
gray into the frost-dimmed windows of the car. I 
had lost more than two hours of my leeway of three, 
and the drifts were still level with the hubs of the 
driving-wheels. 

We shunted and puffed and jerked along, wait- 
ing on side tracks for freight trains hours behind 
33 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
time and switching out of the way of delayed 
“Flyers,” and finally reached Adrian. (Does any- 
body know of a Flyer that is on time when but a 
bare inch of snow covers the track 

Out of the car again, still lugging my impedi- 
menta. 

“Train for Toledo and the East, did you say.^^” 
answered the ticket agent. “Yes, No. 32 is due in 
ten minutes — she’s way behind time and so you’ve 
just caught her. Your ticket is good, but you can’t 
carry no baggage.” 

The information came as a distinct shock. No 
baggage meant no proper habiliments in which 
to appear before my distinguished and critical 
audience — the most distinguished and critical which 
I ever had the good fortune to address — a young 
ladies’ school. 

“Why no baggage.?” 

“’Cause there’s nothing but Pullmans, and only 
express freight carried — it’s a news train. Ought 
to have been here a week ago.” 

“Can I give up my check and send my trunk by 
express ?” 


A NIGHT OUT 

“Yes. That’s the agent over there by the radi- 
ator.” 

One American dollar accomplished it — a silver 
one; they don’t use any other kind of money out 
West. 

When No. 32 hove in sight — the Fast Mail is its 
proper name — and stopped opposite the small sta- 
tion at Adrian, a blessed, beloved, be-capped, be- 
buttoned and be-overcoated Pullman porter — an at- 
tentive, considerate, alert porter — emerged from it 
and at a sign from me picked up my overcoat and 
grip — they now weighed a ton apiece — and with 
a wave of his hand conducted me into a well-swept, 
well-ordered Pullman. 

“Porter, what’s your name?” I inquired. (I 
always ask a porter his name.) 

“Samuel Thomas, sah.” 

“Sam, is there a berth left?” 

“Yes, sah — No. 9 lower.” 

“Is it in order?” 

“Yes, sah — made up for a gem’man at South 
Bend, but he didn’t show up.” 

“Let me see it.” 


35 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

It was exactly as he had stated; even the upper 
berth was clewed up. 

“Sam!” 

“Yes, sah.” 

“Are you married.'*” 

“Yes, sah.” 

“Got any children.?” 

“Yes, sah — ^two.” 

“Think a good deal of them .?” 

“Yes, sah.” The darky was evidently at sea now. 

“Well, Sam, I’m going to bed and to sleep. If 
anybody disturbs me until we get within fifteen 
minutes of Cleveland, your family will never see 
you alive again. Do you understand, Sam.?” 

“Yes, sah, I understand.” His face was in a broad 
grin now. “Thank ye, sah. Here’s an extra pil- 
low,” and he drew the curtains about me. 

At twenty-five minutes past two, and with five 
minutes to spare, I stepped on to the platform of 
the Academy for Young Ladies in Cleveland, prop- 
erly clothed and in my right mind. 

The “weather had permitted.” 

36 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 


f 



i 

A 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 

Steve was angry. 

You could see that from the way he strode up 
and down the platform of the covered railroad sta- 
tion, talking to himself in staccato explosives, like 
an automobile getting under way. Steve had lost 
his sample trunk ; and a drummer without his trunk 
is as helpless as a lone fisherman without bait. 

Outside, a snow-storm was working itself up into 
a blizzard; cuts level with the fences, short curves 
choked with drifts, flat stretches bare of a flake. 
Inside, a panting locomotive crawled ahead of two 
Pullmans and a baggage — a Special from Detroit 
to Kalamazoo, six hours late, loaded with comic- 
opera people, their baggage, properties — and 
Steve’s lost trunk. 

When the train pulled up opposite to where 

39 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
Steve stood, the engine looked like a snow-plough 
that had burrowed through a drift. 

Steve moved down to the step of the first Pull- 
man, his absorbing eye taking in the train, the 
fragments of the drift, and the noses of the 
chorus girls pressed flat against the frosted panes. 
The conductor was now on the platform, crunch- 
ing a tissue telegram which the station-master had 
just handed him. He had stopped for orders and 
for a wider breathing space, where he could get 
out into the open and stretch his arms, and become 
personal and perhaps profane without wounding 
the feelings of his passengers. 

Steve stepped up beside him and showed him 
an open telegram. 

“Yes, your trunk’s aboard all right,” replied the 
conductor, “but I couldn’t find it in a week. A 
lot of scenery and ladders and truck all piled in. 
I am sorry, but I wouldn’t ” 

“What you ‘wouldn’t,’ my sweet Aleck, don’t 
interest me,” exploded Steve. “You get a couple of 
porters and go through that stuff and find my 
trunk, or I’ll wire the main office that ” 


40 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 

“See here, young feller. Don’t get gay. Hit that 
gourd of yours another crack and maybe you’ll 
knock some sense into it. We’re six hours late, ain’t 
we? We got three hours to make Kalamazoo in, 
ain’t we? This show’s got to get there on time, or 
there’ll be H to pay and no pitch hot. Now go out- 
side and stand in a door somewheres and let the 
wind blow through you. I’ll wire you in the morn- 
ing, or you can take the 5.40 and pick your trunk 
up at Kalamazoo. — Let her go, Johnny” — ^this to 
the engine-driver. “All aboard !” 

Steve jerked a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, 
cut off the end, and said, with a bite-in-two-ten- 
penny-nail expression about his lips : 

“ Steve, you’re ‘it.’ I’ll git that trunk at Kala- 
mazoo.” 

Then he crossed the platform, made his way to 
the street entrance, and stepped into the omnibus 
of the only hotel in the town. 

When the swinging sign of the Two-dollar 
House, blurred in the whirl of the storm, hove in 
sight, Steve’s face was still knotted in wrinkles. He 
had a customer in this town good for three hun- 
41 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
dred dozen table cutlery, and but for “this gang 
of cross-tie steppers,” he said to himself, he would 
. . . Here the hind heels of the ’bus hit the curb, 
cutting short Steve’s anathema. 

The drummer picked up his grip and made his 
way to the desk. 

“What’s the matter, Stevey.^” asked Larry, the 
clerk. “You look sour.” 

“Sour.f* I am a green pickle, Larry, that’s what 
I am — a green pickle. Been waiting five hours for 
my trunk in that oriental palm garden of yours 
you call a station. It was aboard a Special loaded 
with chorus girls and props. Conductor wouldn’t 
dump it, and now it’s gone on to Kalamazoo 
and ” 

“Oh, but you’ll get it all right. All you’ve got to 
do, Steve, is to ” 

“Get it ! Yes, when the daisies are blooming over 
us. I want it now, Larry. Whenever I run up 
against anything solid it’s always one of these fly- 
by-nights. What do you think of going upstairs 
in the dark and hauling out a red silk hat and a 
pair of gilt slippers, instead of a sample card of 
42 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 


carvers? Well, that’s what a guy did for me last 
fall down at Logansport. Sent me two burial caskets 
full of chorus-girl props instead of my trunk. Oh, 
yes. I’ll get it — get it in the neck. Here, send this 
grip to my room.” 

The clerk pursed his lips and looked over his key- 
rack. He knew that he had no room — none that 
would suit Stephen Dodd — ^had known it when 
he saw him entering the door, the snow covering 
his hat and shoulders, his grip in his hands. 

“Going to stay all night with us, Stephen?” 
Larry asked. 

“Sure! What do you think I’m here for? 
Blowing and snowing outside fit to beat the band. 
What do you want me to do — bunk in the 
station ?” 

“H’m, h’m,” muttered the clerk, studying the 
key-rack and name-board as if they were plans of 
an enemy’s country. 

Steve looked up. When a clerk began to say 
“H’m,” Steve knew something was wrong. 

“Full?” 

“Well, not exactly full, Steve, but — ^h’m — we’ve 

4S 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
got the ‘Joe Gridley Combination’ with us over- 
night, and about everything ” 

“Go on — go on — ^what’d I tell you? Up ag’in 
these fly-by-nights as usual!” blurted out Steve. 

The clerk raised his hand deprecatingly. 

“Sorry, old man. Put you on the top floor with 
some of the troupe — good rooms, of course, but 
not what I like to give you. Leading lady’s got 
your room, and the manager’s got the one you 
sometimes have over the extension. It’ll only be for 
to-night. They’re going away in the morning, and 
I ” 

“Cut it out — cut it out — ^and forget it,” inter- 
rupted Steve. “So am I going away in the morning. 
Got to take the 5.40 and hunt up that trunk. Can’t 
do a thing without it. Only waltzed in here to get 
something to eat and a bed. Be back later. Put me 
anywhere. This week’s hoodooed, and these show 
guys are doing it. You want a guardian, Stephen 
— a gentle, mild-eyed little guardian. That’s what 
you want.” 

The clerk rang a gong that sounded like a fire- 
alarm and the porter came in on a run. 

44 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 


‘‘Take Mr. Dodd’s grip and show him up to 
Number 11.” 

On the way upstairs Steve’s quick eye caught 
the flare of a play-bill tacked to one wall. 

“What is it.^” he asked of the porter, pointing 
to the poster — ^“an ‘East Lynne’ or a ‘Mother’s 
Curse’.?” 

“No — one o’ them mix-ups, I guess. Song and 
dance stunts. Number 11, did Larry say.? There ye 
are — ^key’s in the lock.” And the porter pushed 
open the door of the room with his foot, dropped 
Steve’s bag on the pine table, turned up the gas — 
the twilight was coming on — asked if there was 
“anything more” — found there wasn’t — not even 
a dime — and left Steve in possession. 

“ ’Bout as big as a coffin, and as cold,” grumbled 
Steve, looking around the room. “No steam-heat — 
one pillow and” — here he punched the bed — “one 
blanket, and thin at that — the bed hard as a — 
Well, if this don’t take the cake ! If this burg don’t 
get a hotel soon I’ll cut it out of my territory.” 

Steve washed his hands ; wiped them on a 14x20 
towel; hung it flat, that it might dry and be use- 
45 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

ful in the morning, gave his hair a slick with his 
comb, scooped up a dozen cigars from a paper box, 
stuffed them in his outside pocket, relocked his grip, 
and retraced his steps downstairs. 

When he reached the play-bill again he stopped 
for particulars. Condensed and pruned of inflam- 
matory adjectives, the gay-colored document con- 
veyed the information that the “Joe Gridley 
Combination” would play for this one night, per- 
formance beginning at 8 p.m., sharp. Molly Martin 
and Jessie Hannibal would dance, Jerry Gobo, the 
clown, would dislocate the ribs of the audience by 
his mirth-provoking sallies, and Miss Pearl Rogers 
of International, etc., etc., would charm them by 
her up-to-date delineations of genteel society. Then 
followed a list of the lesser lights, including chorus 
girls, clog dancers, and acrobats. 

The porter was now shaking the red-hot stove 
with a cast-iron crank the size and shape of a 
burglar’s jimmy, the ashes falling on a square of 
zinc protecting the uncarpeted floor. Steve rec- 
ognized the noise, and looking down over the hand- 
rail called out, pointing to the poster; 

46 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 

“ How far’s this shebang?” 

“ ’Bout a block.” 

“That settles it,” said Steve to himself in the 
only contented tone of voice he had used since he 
entered the hotel. “I’ll take this in.” And con- 
tinuing on downstairs, he dropped into a chair, 
completing the circle around the dispenser of com- 
fort. 

The business of the hotel went on. Trains arrived 
and were met by the lumbering stage, the pas- 
sengers landing in the snow on the sidewalk — some 
for supper, one or two for rooms. 

Supper was announced by a tight-laced blonde 
in white muslin, all hips and shoulders, throwing 
open the dining-room and mounting guard at the 
entrance, her face illumined by that knock-a-chip- 
off-my-shoulder expression common to her class. 

Instantly, and with a simultaneous scraping of 
chair legs, the segments of the circle around the 
stove flung themselves into the narrow passageway. 

Soon the racks were spotted with hats, their 
owners being drawn up in fours around the several 
tables — Steve one of them — the waiter-ladies serv- 
47 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
ing with a sweetness of smile and elegance of man- 
ner found nowhere outside of a royal court, accom- 
panied by a dignity of pose made all the more 
distinguished by a certain inward scoop of the back 
and instantaneous outward bulge below the waist 
line seen only in wax figures flanking a cloak 
counter. 

Steve had a steak, liver and bacon, apple pie, a 
cup of coffee, and a toothpick — all in ten minutes. 
Then he resumed his place by the stove, lit a cigar, 
and kept his eye on the clock. 

Three hours later Steve was again in his chair by 
the stove. He had been to the show and had sat 
through two hours of the performance. If his ex- 
pression had savored of vinegar over the loss of his 
sample trunks, it was now double-proof vitriol! 

“Thought you was goin’ to the show,” grunted 
the porter between his jerks at the handle; he was 
again at the stove, the thermometer marking zero 
outside. 

“Been. Regular frost ; buncoed out of fifty cents I 
That show is the limit ! A couple of skinny-legged 
48 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 


girls doing a clog stunt ; a bag of bones in a low- 
necked dress playing Mrs. Langtry; and a wall- 
eyed clown that looked like a grave-digger. Rot- 
ten — worst I ever saw 1 ” 

“Full house?” 

“Full of empties. ’Bout fifty people, I guess, 
counting deadheads — and ME.” 

Steve accentuated this last word as if his fifty 
cents had been the only real income of the house. 

The outer door now opened, letting in a section 
of the north pole and a cough. 

Steve twisted around in his chair and recognized 
Jerry Gobo, the clown. His grease paint was gone, 
but his haggard features and the graveyard hack 
settled his identity. 

Jerry loosened the collar of his frayed, almost 
threadbare coat, approached the stove slowly, and 
stretching out one blue, emaciated hand, warmed it 
for an instant at its open door — in an apologetic 
way — as if the warming of one hand was all that he 
was entitled to. 

Steve absorbed him at a glance. He saw that his 
neck was thin, especially behind the ears, the cords 
49 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
of the throat showing ; his cheeks sunken ; the sad, 
kindly eyes peering out at him furtively from under 
bushy eyebrows, bright and glassy; his knees, too, 
seemed unsteady. As he stood warming his chilled 
fingers, his hand and arm extended toward the heat, 
his body drawn back, Steve got the impression of 
a boy reaching out for an apple, and ready to cut 
and run at the first alarm. 

“Kind o’ chilly,” the clown ventured, in a voice 
that came from somewhere below his collar-button. 

“Yes,” said Steve gruffly. He didn’t intend to 
start any conversation. He knew these fellows. One 
had done him out of eleven dollars in a ten-cent 
game up at Logansport the winter before. That 
particular galoot didn’t have a cough, but he would 
have had if he could have doubled his winnings 
by it. 

Jerry, rebuffed by Steve’s curt reply, brought 
up the other hand, toasted it for an instant at the 
kindly blaze, rubbed the two sets of bony knuckles 
together, and remarking — this time to himself — 
that he “guessed he’d turn in,” walked slowly to the 
foot of the stairs and began ascending the long 
50 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 
flight, his progress up one wall and half around 
the next marked by his fingers sHding along the 
hand-rail. Steve noticed that the bunched knuckles 
stopped at the first landing (it was all that he could 
see from where he sat) , and after a spell of cough- 
ing slid slowly on around the court. 

The drummer bit off the end of a fresh cigar; 
scraped a match on the under side of his chair seat ; 
lit the domestic, and said with his first puff of 
smoke, his mind still on the emaciated form of 
the clown: 

“Kindlin’ wood for a new crematory.” 

Again the outer door swung open. 

This time the Walking Lady entered, accom- 
panied by the Business Agent. She wore a long 
brown cloak that came to her feet and a stringy fur 
tippet, her head and face covered by a hat con- 
cealed in a thick blue veil. This last she unwound 
inside the hall, and seeing Steve monopohzing the 
stove, began the ascent of the stairs, one step at a 
time, as if she was tired out. 

Steve turned his face away. The bag of bones 
looked worse than ever. “ ’Bout fifty in the shade, 
51 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
I should think,” he said to himself. “Ought to be 
taking in washing and ironing.” Meantime Math- 
ews, the Business Agent, was occupied with the 
clerk — Larrj had presented him with a bill. The 
rates, the agent pleaded, were to be a dollar-sixty. 
Larry insisted on two dollars. Steve pricked up his 
ears; this interested him. If Larry wanted any 
backing as to the price he was within call. This 
information he conveyed to Larry by lifting his 
chin and slowly closing his left eye. 

The outer door continued its vibrations with the 
rapidity of its green-baize namesake leading from 
the dining-room to the kitchen, ushering in some 
member of the troupe with every swing, including 
an elderly woman who had played the Duchess in 
the first act and a fishwife in the second; some 
young men with their hats over their noses, and 
four or five chorus girls. The men looked around 
for the index hand showing the location of the bar, 
and the girls, after a fit of giggling, began the as- 
cent of the stairs to their rooms. Steve noticed that 
two of them continued on to the third floor, where 
J erry Gobo, the clown, had gone, and where he him- 
52 




r 


9 






$ 


Some young men 


and four or five chorus girls. 



AN EXTRA BLANKET 

self was to sleep. One of the girls looked down at 
him as she turned the corner of the stairs and 
nudged her companion — all of which was lost on 
the drummer. They had probably recognized him in 
the audience. 

Nothing, however, in their present make-up could 
have recalled them to Steve’s memory. Molly Mar- 
tin had exchanged her green silk tights and gauze 
wings for a red flannel shirt-waist, a black leather 
belt, blue skirt, and cat-skin jacket. And Jessie 
Hannibal had shed her frou-frou frills and was 
buttoned to her red ears in a long gray ulster that 
reached down to her active little feet, now muffled in 
a pair of galoshes. 

The dispute over the bill at an end, the Business 
Agent fished up a roll from one pocket and a hand- 
ful of silver and copper coins from the other, 
counted out the exact amount, waited until the clerk 
marked a cross against his room number, calling 
him at seven o’clock a.m., tucked the receipt in his 
inside pocket, and began the weary ascent. 

Steve shook himself free from the chair. This 
was about his hour. Rising to his legs, he elongated 
53 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
one side of his round body with his pudgy arm, 
and then the other, yawned sleepily, tipped his hat 
farther over his eyebrows, called to Larry to be 
sure and put him down for the 5.40, and mounted 
the stairs to his room. If he had had any doubts 
as to the fraudulent character of the whole “shoot- 
ing match,” his chance inspection of the caste had 
removed them. 

On entering his room Steve made several discov- 
eries, no one of which relieved his gloom or sweet- 
ened the acidity of his mind. 

First, that the temperature was so far below that 
of a Pullman that the water-pitcher was skimmed 
with ice and the towel frozen as stiff as a dried cod- 
fish. Second, that Jerry, the clown, occupied the 
room to the right, and the two coryphees the room 
to the left. Third, that the partitions were thin as 
paper, or, as Steve expressed it, “thin enough to 
hear a feller change his mind.” 

With the turning-oflp of the gas and the tucking 
of Steve’s fat round face and head under the single 
blanket and quilt, the sheet gripped about his chin, 
there came a harsh, rasping cough from the room 
54 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 
on his right. Jerry had opened. Steve ducked his 
head and covered his ears. The clown would stop in 
a minute, and then Mr. Dodd would drop off to 
sleep. 

Another sound now struck his ear — a woman’s 
voice this time, with a note of sympathy in it. 
Steve raised his head and listened. 

“Say, Jess, ain’t that awful I knew Jerry ’d get 
it on that long jump we made. I ain’t heard him 
cough like that since we left T’ronto.” 

“Oh, dreadful ! And, Molly, he don’t say a word 
’bout how sick he is. Billy had to help him off with 
his — Oh, just hear Jerry! ” 

The talk ceased and Steve snuggled his head 
again. He wasn’t interested in Jerry, or Molly, 
or Jessie. What he wanted was six hours’ sleep, a 
call at 4.45, and his sample trunk. 

Another paroxysm of coughing resounded 
through the partition, and again Steve freed his 
ear. 

“Jerry ain’t got but one little girl left, and she’s 
only five years old. She’s up to the Sacred Heart in 
Moyitre^d. He sends her money every week — he told 

55 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
me so. He showed me her picture oncet. Say ! give 
me some of the cover; it’s awful cold, ain’t it?” 

Steve heard a rustling and tumbling of the bed- 
clothes as the girls nestled the closer. Molly’s voice 
now broke the short silence. 

“Say, Jess, I’m dreadful worried ’bout Jerry. 
I bet he ain’t got no more cover ’n we have. He’s 
right next to us, and ’tain’t no warmer where he 
is than it is here. I’d think he’d tear himself all to 
pieces with that cough. I hope nothin’ ’ll happen to 
him. He ain’t like Mathews. Nobody ever heard a 
cross word out of Jerry, and he’d cut his heart out 
for ye and ” 

Steve covered his head again and shut his eyes. 
Through the coarse cotton sheet he caught, as he 
dozed off to sleep (Jerry’s cough had now become 
a familiar sound, and therefore no longer an in- 
centive to insomnia), additional details of Jerry’s 
life, fortunes and misfortunes, in such broken sen- 
tences as — 

“She never cared for him, so Billy told me. She 
went off with — Why, sure! didn’t you know he 
got burnt out.? — lost his trick ponies when he was 
56 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 
with Forepaugh — It’ll be awful if we have to 
leave him behind, and — I’m goin’ to see a doctor 
just as soon as we get to ” 

Here Steve fell into oblivion. 

Ten minutes later he was startled by the opening 
of his door. In the dim glow of the hall gas-jet 
showing through the crack and the transom, his 
eyes caught the outline of a girl in her night-dress, 
her hair in two braids down her neck. She was step- 
ping noiselessly and approaching his bed. In her 
hand she carried a quilt. Bending above him — 
Steve lying in the shadow — she spread the cover- 
ing gently over his body, tucked the end softly 
about his throat, and as gently tiptoed out of the 
room. Then there came a voice from the other side 
of the partition: 

“He ain’t coughin’ any more — he’s asleep. I got 
it over him. Now get all your clo’es, Molly, and pile 
^em on top. We can get along.” 

Steve lay still. His first impulse was to cry out 
that they had made a mistake — that Jerry was next 
door; his next was to slip into Jerry’s room and 
57 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


pile the quilt on him. Then he checked himself — the 
first would alarm and mortify the girls, and the 
second would be like robbing them of the credit of 
their generous act. Jerry might wake and the girls 
would hear, and explanations follow and all the 
pleasure of their sacrifice be spoiled. No, he’d hand 
it back to the girls, and say he was much obliged 
but he didn’t need it. Again he stopped — this time 
with a sudden pull-up. Going into a chorus girl’s 
room, under any pretence whatever, in a hotel at 
night! No, sir-ee. Bob! Not for Stephen! He had 
been there ; none of that in his ! 

All this time the quilt was choking him — his 
breath getting shorter every minute, as if he was 
being slowly smothered. A peculiar hotness began 
to creep over the skin of his throat and a small lump 
to rise near his Adam’s apple, followed by a slight 
moistening of the eyes — all new symptoms to 
Steve, new since his boyhood. 

Suddenly there flashed into his mind the picture 
of a low-roofed garret room, sheltering a trundle- 
bed tucked away under the slant of the shingles. 
In the dim light where he lay he caught the square 
58 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 
of the small window, the gaunt limbs of the butter- 
nut beyond, and could hear, as he listened, the creak 
of its branches bending in the storm. All about were 
old-fashioned things — a bureau with brass handles ; 
a spinning-wheel; ropes of onions; a shelf of 
apples ; an old saddle ; and a rocking-chair with one 
arm gone and the bottom half out. A soft tread was 
heard upon the stairs, a white figure stole in, and a 
warm hand nestling close to his cheeks tucked the 
border of a quilt under his chin. Then came a voice. 
‘‘I thought you might be cold, son.” 

With a bound Steve sprang from the bed. 

For an instant he sat on the edge of the hard 
mattress, his eyes on the floor, as if in deep thought. 

“Those two girls lying there freezing, and all 
to get that feller warm!” he muttered. “You’re a 
dog, Stephen Dodd — that’s what you are — a yel- 
low dog!” 

Reaching out noiselessly for his shoes and socks, 
he drew them toward him, slipped in his feet, 
dragged on his trousers and shirt, threw his coat 
around his shoulders — he was beginning to shiver 
now — opened the door of his room cautiously, let- 

^9 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
ting in more of the glow of the gas-jet, and stole 
down the corridor to the staircase. Here he looked 
into a black gulf. The only lights were the one by 
the clerk’s desk and the glow of the stove. Quicken- 
ing his steps, he descended the stairs to the lower 
floor. The porter would be up, he said to himself, or 
the night watchman, or perhaps the clerk; some- 
body, anyway, would be around. He looked over the 
counter, expecting to And Larry in his chair ; passed 
out to the porter’s room and studied the trunks and 
boot-stand; peered behind the screen, and flnding 
no one, made a tour of the floor, opening and 
shutting doors. No one was awake. 

Then a new thought struck him. This came with 
a thumping of one flst in the palm of the other 
hand, his face breaking out into a satisfled smile at 
his discovery. He remounted the stairs — the first 
flight two steps at a time, the second flight one step 
at a time, the last few levels on his toes. If he had 
intended to burglarize one of the rooms he could 
not have been more careful about making a noise. 
Entering his own apartment, he picked up the quilt 
the girls had spread over him, folded it carefully 
60 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 


and laid it on the floor. Then he stripped off his 
own blanket and quilt and placed them beside it. 
These two packages he tucked under his arm, and 
with the tread of a cat crept down the corridor to 
the stairway. Once there, he wheeled and with both 
heels striking the bare floor came tramping toward 
the girls’ room. 

Next came a rap like a five-o’clock call — low, so 
as not to wake the more fortunate in the adjoining 
rooms, but sure and positive. Steve knew how it 
sounded. 

“Who’s there ? ” cried Molly in a voice that 
showed that Steve’s knuckles had brought her to 
consciousness. “ ’Tain’t time to get up, is it.?” 

“No, I’m the night watchman ; some of the folks 
is complaining of the cold and saying there warn’t 
covering enough, and so I thought you ladies might 
want some more bedclothes,” and Steve squeezed 
the quilt in through the crack of the door. 

“Oh, thank you,” began Molly; “we were sort 
o’—” 

“Don’t mention it,” answered Steve, closing the 
door tight and shutting off any further remark. 

61 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

The heels were lifted now, and Steve crept to 
Jerry’s door on his toes. For an instant he listened 
intently until he caught the sound of the labored 
breathing of the sleeping man, opened the door 
gently, laid the blanket and quilt he had taken 
from his own bed over Jerry’s emaciated shoulders, 
and crept out again, dodging into his own room 
with the same sort of relief in his heart that a sneak 
thief feels after a successful raid. Here he finished 
dressing. 

Catching up his grip, he moved back his door, 
peered out to be sure he was not being watched, and 
tiptoed along the corridor and so on to the floor 
below. 

An hour later the porter, aroused by his alarm 
clock to get ready for the 5.40, found Steve by the 
stove. He had dragged up another chair and 
lay stretched out on the two, his head lost in the 
upturned collar of his coat, his slouch hat pulled 
down over his eyes. 

“Why, I thought you’d turned in,” yawned the 
porter, dumping a shovelful of coal into the stove. 

62 


AN EXTRA BLANKET 
“Yes, I did, but I couldn’t sleep.” There was a 
note in Steve’s voice that made the porter raise his 
eyes. 

“Ain’t sick, are ye.?” 

“No — kind o’ nervous — get that way sometimes. 
Not in your way, am I.?” 


6S 


•* 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 


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A MEDAL OF HONOR 


H E was short and thick-set: round-bodied — a 
bulbous round, like an onion — with alternate layers 
of waistcoats, two generally, the under one of 
cotton duck showing a selvage of white, and the 
outer one of velvet or cloth showing a pattern of 
dots, stripes, or checks, depending on the prevailing 
style at the wholesale clothier’s where he traded, the 
whole topped by a sprouting green necktie. Out- 
side this waistcoat drooped a heavy gold chain con- 
necting with a biscuit-shaped watch, the under 
convex of its lid emblazoned with his monogram in 
high relief, and the upper concave decorated with a 
photograph of his best girl. 

The face of this Inviting and correctly attired 
young gentleman was likewise round; the ends of 
the mouth curving upward, not downward — ^up- 
ivard, with a continuous smile in each corner, even 

67 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

when the mouth was shut, as if the laugh inside 
of him were still tickling his funny-bone and the 
corners of the mouth were recording the vibrations. 
These uncontrollable movements connected with 
other hilarious wriggles puckering with merriment 
under the pupils of his two keen, searching eyes, 
bright as the lens of a camera and as sensitive and 
absorbing. 

Nothing escaped these eyes — nothing that was 
worth wasting a plate on. Men and their uses, 
women and their needs, fellow-travellers with de- 
sirable information who were cutting into the 
bulbous-shaped man’s territory, were all focussed 
by these eyes and deluded by this mouth into 
giving up their best cash discounts and any other 
information needed. Some hayseeds might get left, 
but not Sam Makin. 

“Well, I guess not ! No flies on Samuel ! Up and 
dressed every minute and ‘next’ every time !” Such 
was the universal tribute. 

This knowledge did not end with humans. Sam 
knew the best train out and in, and the best seat in 
it; the best hotel in town and the best table in the 
68 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
dining-room, as well as the best dish on the bill of 
fare — not of one town, but of hundreds all over his 
territory. That is what he paid for, and that was 
what he intended to have. 

When Sam was on the road, in addition to his 
grip — which held a change of waistcoats (Sam 
did his finest work with a waistcoat), some 
collars and a couple of shirts, one to wash and the 
other to wear, a tooth-brush and a comb — he held 
the brass checks of four huge trunks made of 
rawhide and strapped and cornered with iron. 
These went by weight and were paid for at schedule 
prices. When a baggage-master overweighed these 
trunks an ounce and charged accordingly there 
came an uncomfortable moment and an interchange 
of opinions, followed by an apology and a deduc- 
tion, Sam standing by. Only on occasions like these 
did the smiles disappear from the corners of Sam’s 
mouth. 

Whenever these ironclads, however, were elevated 
to the upper floor of a hotel, and Sam began to 
make himself at home, the wriggles playing around 
the corners of his mouth extended quite up his smil- 

69 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
ing cheeks with the movement of little lizards 
darting over a warm stone. 

And his own welcome from everybody in the 
house was quite as cordial and hilarious. 

“Hello, Sam, old man ! Number 31’s all ready — 
mail’s on your bureau.” This from the clerk. 

“Oh! is it you ag’in. Mister Sam? Oh — go ’long 
wid ye! Now stop that!” This from the chamber- 
maid. 

“It’s good to git a look at ye ! And them box-cars 
o’ yourn ain’t no bird-cages! Yes, sir — ^thank ye, 
sir.” This from the porter. 

But it was when the trunks were opened and their 
contents spread out on the portable and double-up- 
able pine tables, and Bullock & Sons’ (of Spring 
Falls, Mass.) latest and best assortment of domestic 
cutlery was exposed to view, and the room became 
crowded with Sam’s customers, that the smile on 
his face became a veritable coruscation of wriggles 
and darts; scurrying around his lips, racing in 
circles from his nose to his ears, tumbling over 
each other around the comers of his pupils and 
):)eneatb the lids ; Sam talking all the time, the keen 

TO 



'I'he room became crowded with Sam’s customers. 



I 




A MEDAL OF HONOR 

eyes boring, or taking impressions, the sales increas- 
ing every moment. 

When the last man was bowed out and the 
hatches of the ironclads were again shut, anyone 
could see that Sam had skimmed the cream of the 
town. The hayseeds might have what was left. Then 
he would go downstairs, square himself before a 
long, sloping desk, open a non-stealable inkstand, 
turn on an electric light, sift out half a dozen sheets 
of hotel paper, and tell Bullock & Sons all about it. 

On this trip Sam’s ironclads were not wide open 
on a hotel table, but tight-locked aboard a Fall 
River steamer. Sam had a customer in Fall River, 
good for fifty dozen of B. & S.’s No. 18 scissors, $9 
— 10 per cent, off and 5 more for cash. The iron- 
clads had been delivered on the boat by the transfer 
company. Sam had taken a street-car. There was 
a block, half an hour’s delay, and Sam arrived on 
the string-piece as the gangplank was being hauled 
aboard. 

“Look out, young feller!” said the wharfman; 
“you’re left.” 

71 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
“Look again, you Su-markee!” (nobody knows 
what Sam means by this epithet), and the drummer 
threw his leg over the rail of the slowly moving 
steamer and dropped on her deck as noiselessly as 
a cat. This done, he lifted a cigar from a bunch 
stuffed in the outside pocket of the prevailing waist- 
coat, bit off the end, swept a match along the seam 
of his “pants” (Sam’s own), lit the end of the 
domestic, blew a ring toward the fast-disappearing 
wharfman, and turned to get his ticket and state- 
room, neither of which had he secured. 

Just here Mr. Samuel Makin, of Bullock & Sons, 
manufacturers, etc., etc., received a slight shock. 

There was a ticket-office and a clerk, and a rack 
of state-room keys, just as Sam had expected, but 
there was also a cue of passengers — a long, winding 
snake of a cue beginning at the window framing 
the clerk’s face and ending on the upper deck. This 
crawling line of expectants was of an almost uni- 
form color, so far as hats were concerned — most 
of them dark blue and all of them banded about 
with a gold cord and acorns. The shoulders varied 
a little, showing a shoulder-strap here and there, 

n 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
and once in a while the top of a medal pinned to 
a breast pressed tight against some comrade’s back. 
Lower down, whenever the snake parted for an in- 
stant, could be seen an armless sleeve and a pair of 
crutches. As the head of this cue reached the win- 
dow a key was passed out and the fortunate owner 
broke away, the coveted prize in his hand, and 
another expectant took his place. 

Sam watched the line for a moment and then 
turned to a by-stander: 

“What’s going on here.? — a camp-meeting.?” 

“No. Grand Army of the Republic — going to 
Boston for two days. Ain’t been a berth aboard 
here for a week. Sofas are going at two dollars, 
and pillows at seventy-five cents.” 

Sam’s mind reverted for a moment to the look 
on the wharf man’s face, and the corners of his 
mouth began to play. He edged nearer to the win- 
dow and caught the clerk’s eye. 

“No hurry, Billy,” and Sam winked, and all the 
lizards darted out and began racing around the 
corners of his mouth. “ ’Tend to these gents first — 
I’ll call later. Number 15, ain’t it.?” 

73 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


The clerk moved the upper lid of his left eye a 
hair’s breadth, took a key from the rack and slipped 
it under a pile of papers on his desk. 

Sam caught the vibration of the lid, tilted his 
domestic at a higher angle, and went out to view 
the harbor and the Statue of Liberty and the 
bridge — any old thing that pleased him. Then this 
expression slipped from between his lips: 

“That was one on the hayseeds ! Cold day when 
you’re left, Samuel!” 

When supper-time arrived the crowd was so great 
that checks were issued for two tables, an hour 
apart. When the captain of the boat and the rank- 
ing officer of the G. A. R. filed in, followed by a 
hungry mob, a lone man was discovered seated at a 
table nearest the galley where the dishes were 
hottest and best served. It was Sam. He had come in 
through the pantry, and the head steward — Sam 
had known him for years, nearly as long as he had 
known the clerk — had attended to the other de- 
tails, one of which was a dish of soft-shell crabs, 
only enough for half a dozen passengers, and 
which toothsome viands the head steward scratched 
74 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 

off the bill of fare the moment they had been 
swallowed. 

That night Sam sat up on deck until the moon 
rose over Middle Ground Light, talking shop to 
another drummer, and then he started for state- 
room Number 15 with an upper and lower berth 
(both Sam’s), including a set of curtains for each 
berth — a chair, a washbowl, life-preserver, and 
swinging light. On his way to this Oriental boudoir 
he passed through the saloon. It was occupied by 
a miscellaneous assortment of human beings — men, 
women and children in all positions of discomfort 
— some sprawled out on the stationary sofas, some 
flat on the carpet, their backs to the panelling; 
others nodding on the staircase, determined to sit it 
out until daylight. On the deck below, close against 
the woodwork, rolled up in their coats, was here and 
there a veteran. They had slept that way many a 
time in the old days with the dull sound of a dis- 
tant battery lulling them to sleep — they rather 
liked it. 

The next morning, when the crowd swarmed out 
to board the train at Fall River, Sam tarried a 
75 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
moment at the now deserted ticket-office, smiled 
blandly at Billy, and laid a greenback on the 
sill. 

“What’s the matter, old man, with my holding 
on to Number 15 till I come back? This boat goes 
back to New York day after to-morrow, doesn’t 
she?” 

Billy nodded, picked up a lead-pencil and put a 
cross against Number 15 ; then he handed Sam back 
his change and the key. 

All that day in Fall River Sam sold cutlery, the 
ironclads doing service. The next day he went to 
Boston on a later train than the crowd, and had 
almost a whole car to himself. The third day he 
returned to Fall River an hour ahead of the 
special train carrying the Grand Army, and again 
with half the car to himself. When the special 
rolled into the depot and was shunted on to the 
steamboat dock, it looked, in perspective from 
where Sam stood, like a tenement-house on a hot 
Sunday — every window and door stuffed with 
heads, arms, and legs. 

Sam studied the mob for a few minutes, felt in his 

76 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
“pants” pocket for his key, gave it one or two lov- 
ing pats with his fingers, and took a turn up the 
dock where it was cooler and where the human 
avalanche wouldn’t run over him. 

When the tenement-house was at last unloaded, 
it was discovered that it had contained twice as 
many people as had filled it two days before. They 
had gone to Boston by different lines, and being 
now tired out and penniless were returning home 
by the cheapest and most comfortable route. They 
wanted the salt zephyrs of the sea to fan them 
to sleep, and the fish and clams and other marine 
delicacies so lavishly served on the Fall River Line 
as a tonic for their depleted systems. 

Not the eager, expectant crowd that with band 
playing and flags flying had swept out of the depot 
the day of the advance on Boston! Not that kind 
of a crowd at all, but a bedraggled, forlorn, 
utterly exhausted and worn-out crowd; children 
crying, and pulled along by one arm or hugged to 
perspiring breasts ; uniforms yellow with dust ; men 
struggling to keep the surging mass from wives 
who had hardly strength left for another step; 

77 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
flags furled; bass drum with a hole in it; band 
silent. 

Sam looked on and again patted his key. The 
hayseeds had aired their collars and had “got it in 
the neck.” No G. A. R. for Samuel ; no excursions, 
no celebrations, no picnics for him. He had all his 
teeth, and an extra wisdom molar for Sundays. 

The contents of the tenement now began to press 
through the closed shed on their way to the gang- 
plank, and Sam, realizing the size of the mob, and 
fearing that half of them, including himself, would 
be left on the dock, slipped into the current and was 
swept over the temporary bridge, across the deck 
and up the main staircase leading to the saloon — up 
to the top step. 

Here the current stopped. 

Ahead of him was a sohd mass, and behind him 
a pressure that increased every moment and that 
threatened to push him off* his feet. He could get 
neither forward nor back. 

A number of other people were in the same pre- 
dicament. One was a young woman who, in sheer 
exhaustion, had seated herself upon the top step 
78 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
level with the floor of the saloon. Her hair was di- 
shevelled, her bonnet awry, her pretty silk cape cov- 
ered with dust. On her lap lay a boy of five years of 
age. Close to her — so close that Sam’s shoulder 
pressed against his — stood a man in an army hat 
with the cord and acorn encircling the crown. On 
his breast was pinned a medal. Sam was so close 
he could read the inscription : “Fair Oaks,” it said, 
and then followed the date and the name and num- 
ber of the regiment. Sam knew what it meant: he 
had had an uncle who went to the war, and who 
wore a medal. His sword hung over the mantel in 
his mother’s sitting-room at home. The man before 
him had, no doubt, been equally brave : he had saved 
the colors the day of the fight, perhaps, or had car- 
ried a wounded comrade out of range of a rifle pit, 
or had thrown an unexploded shell clear of a tent — 
some little thing like that. 

Sam had never seen a medal that close before, and 
his keen lens absorbed every detail — the ribbon, the 
way it was fastened to the cloth, the broad, strong 
chest behind it. Then he looked into the man’s firm, 
determined, kindly face with its piercing black eyes 

79 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
and closely trimmed mustache, and then over his 
back and legs. He was wondering now where the 
ball had struck him, and what particular part of 
his person had been sacrificed in earning so dis- 
tinguishing a mark of his country’s gratitude. 

Then he turned to the woman, and a slight frown 
gathered on his face when he realized that she alone 
had blocked his way to the open air and the deck 
beyond. He could step over any number of men 
whenever the mass of human beings crushing his 
ribs and shoulder-blades began once more to move, 
but a woman — a tired woman — with a boy — out 
on a jamboree like this, with 

Here Sam stopped, and instinctively felt around 
among his loose change for his key. Number 15 was 
all right, any way. 

At the touch of the key Sam’s face once more 
resumed its contented look, the lizards darting out 
to play, as usual. 

The boy gave a sharp cry. 

The woman put her hand on the child’s head, 
smoothed it softly, and looked up in the face of the 
man with the medal. 


80 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 

“And you can get no state-room, George?” she 
asked in a plaintive tone. 

“State-room, Kitty ! Why, we couldn’t get a pil- 
low. I tried to get a shake-down some’ers, but half 
these people won’t get six feet of space to lie down 
in, let alone a bed.” 

“Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do. 
Freddie’s got a raging fever ; I can’t hold him here 
in my arms all night.” 

Sam shifted his weight to the other foot and 
concentrated his camera. The man with the medal 
and the woman with the boy were evidently man and 
wife. Sam had no little Freddie of his own — no 
Kitty, in fact — not yet — no home really that he 
could call his own — never more than a month at 
a time. A Pullman lower or a third story front in a 
three-dollar-a-day hotel was often his bed, and 
a marble-top table with iron legs screwed to the 
floor of a railroad restaurant and within sound of a 
big-voiced gateman bawling out the trains, gen- 
erally his board. Freddie looked like a nice boy, 
and she looked like a nice woman. Man was O. K., 
anyhow — didn’t give medals of honor to any other 
81 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
kind. Both of them fools, though, or they wouldn’t 
have brought that kid out 

Again the child turned its head and uttered a 
faint cry, this time as if in pain. 

Sam freed his arm from the hip bone of the pas- 
senger on his left, and said in a sympathetic voice — 
unusual for Sam: 

“Is this your boy?” The drummer was not a 
bom conversationalist outside of trade matters, but 
he had to begin somewhere. 

“Yes, sir.” The woman looked up and a flick- 
ering smile broke over her lips. “Our only one, 
sir.” 

“Sick, ain’t he?” 

“Yes, sir ; got a high fever.” 

The man with the medal now wrenched his shoul- 
der loose and turned half round toward Sam. Sam 
never looked so jolly nor so trustworthy : the lizards 
were in full play all over his cheeks. 

“Freddie’s all tired out, comrade. I didn’t want 
to bring him, but Kitty begged so. It was crossing 
the Common, in that heat — your company must 
have felt it when you come along. The sun beat 
8 ^ 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
down terrible on Freddie — ^that’s what used him 
up.” 

Sam felt a glow start somewhere near his heels, 
struggle up through his spinal column and end in 
his fingers. Being called “comrade” by a man with 
a medal on his chest was, somehow, better than being 
mistaken for a millionaire. 

“Can’t you get a state-room.^” Sam asked. Of 
course the man couldn’t — ^he had heard him say so. 
The drummer was merely sparring for time — try- 
ing to adjust himself to a new situation — one rare 
with him. Meanwhile the key of Number 15 was 
turning in his pocket as uneasily as a grain of 
corn on a hot shovel. 

The man shook his head in a hopeless way. The 
woman replied in his stead — she, too, had fallen a 
victim to Sam’s smile. 

“No, sir, that’s the worst of it,” she said in a 
choking voice. “If we only had a pillow we could 
put Freddie’s head on it and I could find some place 
where he might be comfortable. I don’t much mind 
for myself, but it’s dreadful about Freddie — ” and 
she bent her head over the child. 


83 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

Sam thought of the upper berth in Number 15 
with two pillows and the lower berth with two more. 
By this time the key of Number 15 had reached a 
white heat. 

“Well, I guess I can help out,” Sam blurted. 
“I’ve got a state-room — got two berths in it. 
Just suit you, come to think of it. Here” — 
and he dragged out the key — “Number 15 — main 
deck — you can’t miss it. Put the kid there and 
bunk in yourselves — ” and he dropped the key in 
the woman’s lap, his voice quivering, a lump in 
his throat the size of a hen’s egg. 

“Oh, sir, we couldn’t !” cried the woman. 

“No, comrade,” interrupted the man, “we can’t 
do that; we ” 

Sam heard, but he did not tarry. With one of 
his nimble springs he lunged through the crowd, 
his big fat shoulders breasting the mob, wormed 
himself out into the air; slipped down a ladder to 
the deck below, interviewed the steward, borrowed 
a blanket and a pillow and proceeded to hunt up 
the ironclads. If the worst came to the worst he 
would string them in a row, spread his blanket on 
84 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 


top and roll up for the night. Their height would 
keep him off the deck, and the roof above them 
would protect him from the weather should a squall 
come up. 

This done, he drew out a domestic from the upper 
pocket, bit off the end, slid a match along the well- 
worn seam and blew a ring out to sea. 

“Couldn’t let that kid sit up all night, you 
know,” he muttered to himself. “Not your Uncle 
Joseph: no sir-ee — ” and he wedged his way back 
to the deck again. 

An hour later, with his blanket over his shoulder 
and his pillow under his arm, Sam again sought his 
ironclads. Steward, chief cook, clerk — everything 
had failed. The trunks with the pillow and blanket 
were all that was left. 

It was after nine o’clock now, and the summer 
twilight had faded and only the steamer’s lanterns 
shone on the heads of the people. As he passed 
the companion-way he ran into a man in an army 
hat. Backing away in apology he caught the glint 
of a medal. Then came a familiar voice: 


85 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

“Comrade, where you been keeping yourself? I’ve 
been hunting you all over the boat. You’re the man 
gave me the key, ain’t you?” 

^^Sure! How’s the kid? Is he all right? Didn’t I 
tell you you’d find that up-to-date? It’s a cracker- 
jack, that room is; I’ve had it before. Tell me, 
how’s the kid and the wife — ^kind o’ comfy, ain’t 
they?” 

“Both are all right. Freddie’s in the lower berth 
and Kitty sitting by him. He’s asleep, and the 
fever’s going down; ain’t near so hot as he was. 
You’re white, comrade, all the way through.” The 
man’s big hand closed over Sam’s in a warm em- 
brace. “I thank you for it. You did us a good turn 
and we ain’t going to forget you.” 

Sam kept edging away ; what hurt him most was 
being thanked. 

“But that ain’t what I’ve been hunting you for, 
comrade,” the man continued. “You didn’t get a 
state-room, did you?” 

“No,” said Sam, shaking his head and still back- 
ing away. “But I’m all right — got a pillow and a 
blanket — see!” and he held them up. “You needn’t 
86 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
worry, old man. This ain’t nothing to the way I 
sleep sometimes. I’m one of those fellows can bunk 
in anywhere.” Sam was now in sight of his trunks. 

“Yes,” answered the man, still keeping close to 
Sam, “that’s just what we thought would happen; 
that’s what does worry us, and worry us bad. You 
ain’t going to bunk in anywhere — not by a blamed 
sight! Kitty and I have been talking it over, and 
what Kitty says goes ! There’s two bunks in that 
state-room ; Kitty’s in one ’longside of the boy, and 
you got to sleep in the other.” 

“Me! — well — ^but — why, man!” Sam’s astonish- 
ment took his breath away. 

“ You got to !” The man meant it. 

“But I won’t!” said Sam in a determined voice. 

“Well, then, out goes Kitty and the boy! You 
think I’m going to sleep in your bunk, and have 
you stretched out here on a plank some’ers! No, 
sir! You got to, I tell you!” 

“Why, see here !” Sam was floundering about now 
as helplessly as if he had been thrown overboard 
with his hands tied. 

“There ain’t no seeing about it, comrade.” The 

87 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

man was close to him now, his eyes boring into 
Sam’s with a look in them as if he was taking aim. 

“You say I’ve got to get into the upper berth 
asked Sam in a baffled tone. 

“Yes.” 

Sam ruminated: “When.?” 

“When Kitty gets to bed.” 

“How’ll I know.?” 

“I’ll come for you.” 

“All right — ^you’ll find me here.” 

Then Sam turned up the deck muttering to him- 
self : “That’s one on you, Sam-u-e-1 — one under the 
chin-whisker. Got to — eh.? Well, for the love of 
Mike!” 

In ten minutes Sam heard a whistle and raised 
his head. The man with the medal was leaning over 
the rail looking down at him. 

Sam mounted the steps and picked his way 
among the passengers sprawled over the floor and 
deck. The man advanced to meet him, smiled con- 
tentedly, walked along the corridor, put his hand 
on the knob of the door of Number 15, opened it 
noiselessly, beckoned silently, waited until Sam had 
88 


A MEDAL OF HONOR 
stepped over the threshold and closed the door 
upon him. Then the man tiptoed back to the 
saloon. 

Sam looked about him. The curtains of the lower 
berth were drawn; the curtains of the upper one 
were wide open. On a chair was his bag, and on a 
hook by the shuttered window the cape and hat of 
the wife and the clothes of the sleeping boy. 

At the sight of the wee jacket and little half- 
breeches, tiny socks and cap, Sam stopped short. 
He had never before slept in a room with a child, 
and a strange feeling, amounting almost to awe, 
crept over him. It was as if he had stepped sud- 
denly into a shrine and had been confronted by 
the altar. The low-turned lamp and the silence — 
no sound came from either of the occupants — only 
added to the force of the impression. 

Sam slipped off his coat and shoes, hung the 
first on a peg and laid the others on the floor; 
loosened his collar, mounted the chair, drew him- 
self stealthily Into the upper berth ; closed the cur- 
tains and stretched himself out. As his head 
touched the pillow a soft, gentle, rested voice said: 
89 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


‘‘I can’t tell you how grateful we are, sir — good- 
night.” 

‘‘Don’t mention it, ma’am,” whispered Sam in 
answer; “mighty nice of you to let me come,” 
and he dropped off to sleep. 

At the breaking of the dawn Sam woke with a 
start; ran his eye around the room until he found 
his bearings ; drew his legs together from the cover- 
let ; let himself down as stealthily as a cat walking 
over teacups ; picked up his shoes, slipped his arms 
into his coat, gave a glance at the closed curtains 
sheltering the mother and child, and crossed the 
room on his way to the door with the tread of a 
burglar. 

Reaching out his hand in the dim light he studied 
the lock for an instant, settled in his mind which 
knob to turn so as to make the least noise, and 
swung back the door. 

Outside on the mat, sound asleep, so close that 
he almost stepped on him, lay the Man with the 
Medal. 


90 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 





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THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 


J.T was the crush hour at Sherry’s. A steady 
stream of men and women in smart toilettes — ^the 
smartest the town afforded — ^had flowed in under 
the street awning, through the doorway guarded 
by flunkeys, past the dressing-rooms and coat- 
racks, and were now banked up in the spacious hall 
waiting for tables, the men standing about, the 
women resting on the chairs and divans listening to 
the music of the Hungarian band or chatting with 
one another. The two cafes were full — ^had been 
since seven o’clock, every table being occupied ex- 
cept two. One of these had been reserved that morn- 
ing by my dear friend Marny, the distinguished 
painter of portraits — I being his guest — and the 
other, so the head-waiter told us, awaited the ar- 
rival of Mr. John Stirling, who would entertain a 
party of six. 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


When Marny was a poor devil of an illustrator, 
and worked for the funny column of the weekly 
papers — we had studios in the same building — we 
used to dine at Porcelli’s, the price of the two meals 
equalhng the value of one American trade dollar, 
and including one bottle of vin ordinaire. Now that 
Mamy wears a ribbon in his button-hole, has a suite 
of rooms that look like a museum, man-servants and 
maid-servants, including an English butler whose 
principal business is to see that Marny is not dis- 
turbed, a line of carriages before his door on his 
reception days, and refuses two portraits a week 
at his own prices — we sometimes dine at Sherry’s. 

As I am still a staid old landscape painter living 
up three flights of stairs with no one to wait on me 
but myself and the ten-year-old daughter of the 
janitor, I must admit that these occasional forays 
into the whirl of fashionable life afford me not only 
infinite enjoyment, but add greatly to my knowl- 
edge of human nature. 

As we followed the waiter into the cafe, a group 
of half a dozen men, all in full dress, emerged from 
a side room and preceded us into the restaurant, led 
94 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
by a handsome young fellow of thirty. The next 
moment they grouped themselves about the other 
reserved table, the young fellow seating his guests 
himself, drawing out each chair with some remark 
that kept the whole party laughing. 

When we had settled into our own chairs, and 
my host had spread his napkin and looked about 
him, the young fellow nodded his head at Marny, 
clasped his two hands together, shook them together 
heartily, and followed this substitute for a closer 
welcome by kissing his hand at him. 

Marny returned the courtesy by a similar hand- 
shake, and bending his head said in a low voice, 
“The Rajah must be in luck to-night.” 

“Who.f^” I asked. My acquaintance with foreign 
potentates is necessarily limited. 

“The Rajah — Jack Stirling. Take a look at him. 
You’ll never see his match; nobody has yet.” 

I shifted my chair a little, turned my head in the 
opposite direction, and then slowly covering Stir- 
ling with my gaze — the polite way of staring at a 
stranger — got a full view of the man’s face and 
figure ; rather a difficult thing on a crowded night 
95 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


at Sherry’s, unless the tables are close together. 
What I saw was a well-built, athletic-looking young 
man with a smooth-shaven face, laughing eyes, a 
Cupid mouth, curly brown hair, and a fresh ruddy 
complexion ; a Lord Byron sort of a young fellow 
with a modern up-to-date training. He was evi- 
dently charming his guests, for every man’s head 
was bent forward seemingly hanging on each 
word that fell from his lips. 

“A rajah, is he? He don’t look like an Oriental.” 

“He isn’t. He was bom in New Jersey.” 

“Is he an artist?” 

“Yes, five or six different kinds ; he draws better 
than I do ; plays on three instruments, and speaks 
five languages.” 

“Rich?” 

“No — dead broke half the time.” 

I glanced at the young fellow’s faultless appear- 
ance and the group of men he was entertaining. 
My eye took in the array of bottles, the number of 
wineglasses of various sizes, and the mass of roses 
that decorated the centre of the table. Such ap- 
pointments and accompaniments are not generally 

96 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 


the property of the poor. Then, again, I remem- 
bered we were at Sherry’s. 

“What does he do for a living, then?” I asked. 

“Do for a living? He doesn’t do anything for a 
living. He’s a purveyor of cheerfulness. He wakes 
up every morning with a fresh stock of happiness, 
more than he can use himself, and he trades it off 
during the day for anything he can get.” 

“What kind of things ?” I was a little hazy over 
Mamy’s meaning. 

“Oh, dinners — social, of course — ^board bills, 
tailor’s bills, invitations to country houses, voyages 
on yachts — anything that comes along and of 
which he may be in need at the time. Most interest- 
ing man in town. Everybody loves him. Known all 
over the world. If a fellow gets sick, Stirling waltzes 
in, fires out the nurse, puts on a linen duster, starts 
an alcohol lamp for gruel, and never leaves till you 
are out again. All the time he is pumping laughs 
into you and bracing you up so that you get well 
twice as quick. Did it for me once for five weeks on 
a stretch, when I was laid up in my studio with in- 
flammatory rheumatism, with my grub bills hung 

97 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


up in the restaurant downstairs, and my rent three 
months overdue. Fed me on the fat of the land, too. 
Soup from Delmonico’s, birds from some swell house 
up the Avenue, where he had been dining — sent that 
same night with the compliments of his hostess with 
a ‘Please forgive me, but dear Mr. Stirhng tells 
me how ill you have been, and at his suggestion, 
and with every sympathy for your sufferings — 
please accept.’ Oh, I tell you he’s a daisy !” 

Here a laugh sounded from Stirling’s table. 

“Who’s he got in tow now.?” I asked, as my eyes 
roamed over the merry party. 

“That fat fellow in eyeglasses is Crofield the 
banker, and the hatchet-faced man with white 
whiskers is John Riggs from Denver, President of 
the C. A. — ^worth ten millions. I don’t know the 
others — some bored-to-death fellows, perhaps, 
starving for a laugh. Jack ought to go slow, for 
he’s dead broke — ^told me so yesterday.” 

“Perhaps Riggs is paying for the dinner.” This 
was an impertinent suggestion, I know; but then 
sometimes I can be impertinent — especially when 
some of my pet theories have to be defended. 

98 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 

“Not if Jack invited him. He’s the last man in 
the world to sponge on anybody. Inviting a man to 
dinner and leaving his pocketbook in his other coat 
is not Jack’s way. If he hasn’t got the money in 
his own clothes, he’ll find it somehow, but not in 
their clothes.” 

“Well, but at times he must have ready money,” 
I insisted. “He can’t be living on credit all the 
time.” I have had to work for all my pennies, am 
of a practical turn of mind, and often live in con- 
stant dread of the first of every month — that fatal 
pay-day from which there is no escape. The success, 
therefore, of another fellow along different and 
more luxurious lines naturally irritates me. 

“Yes, now and then he does need money. But 
that never bothers Jack. When his tailor, or his 
shoemaker, or his landlord gets him into a corner, 
he sends the bill to some of his friends to pay for 
him. They never come back — anybody would do 
Stirling a favor, and they know that he never calls 
on them unless he is up against it solid.” 

I instinctively ran over in my mind which of my 
own friends I would approach, in a similar emer- 

99 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


gencj, and the notes I would receive in reply. Stir- 
ling must know rather a stupid lot of men or they 
couldn’t be buncoed so easily, I thought. 

Soup was now being served, and Marny and the 
waiter were discussing the merits of certain 
vintages, my host insisting on a bottle of ’84 in 
place of the ’82, then in the waiter’s hand. 

During the episode I had the opportunity to 
study Stirling’s table. I noticed that hardly a man 
entered the room who did not stop and lay his hand 
affectionately on Stirling’s shoulder, bending over 
and joining in the laugh. His guests, too — those 
about his table — seemed equally loyal and happy. 
Riggs’s hard business face — evidently a man of 
serious life — was beaming with merriment and twice 
as wide, under Jack’s leadership, and Crofield and 
the others were leaning forward, their eyes fixed on 
their host, waiting for the point of his story, then 
breaking out together in a simultaneous laugh that 
could be heard all over our part of the room. 

When Marny had received the wine he wanted 
— it’s extraordinary how critical a man’s palate 
becomes when his income is thousands a year in- 
100 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 


stead of dollars — I opened up again with my bat- 
tery of questions. His friend had upset all my 
formulas and made a laughing-stock of my most 
precious traditions. “Pay as you go and keep out 
of debt” seemed to belong to a past age. 

“Speaking of your friend, the Rajah, as you 
call him,” I asked, “and his making his friends pay 
his bills — does he ever pay back.^” 

“Always, when he gets it.” 

“Well, where does he get it — cards .^” It seemed 
to me now that I saw some comforting light ahead, 
dense as I am at times. 

“Cards! Not much — never played a game in his 
life. Not that kind of a man.” 

“How, then.?” I wanted the facts. There must be 
some way in which a man like Stirling could live, 
keep out of jail, and keep his friends — friends like 
Marny. 

“Same way. Just chucks around cheerfulness to 
everybody who wants it, and ’most everybody does. 
As to ready money, there’s hardly one of his rich 
friends in the Street who hasn’t a Jack Stirling 
account on his books. And they are always lucky, 
101 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
for what they buy for Jack Stirling is sure to go 
up. Got to be a superstition, really. I know one 
broker who sent him over three thousand dollars 
last fall — ^made it for him out of a rise in some coal 
stock. Wrote him a note and told him he still had 
two thousand dollars to his credit on his books, 
which he would hold as a stake to make another turn 
on next time he saw a sure thing in sight. I was 
with Jack when he opened the letter. What do you 
think he did.^ He pulled out his bureau drawer, 
found a slip of paper containing a list of his debts, 
sat down and wrote out a check for each one of his 
creditors and enclosed them in the most charming 
little notes with marginal sketches — some in water- 
color — which every man of them preserves now as 
souvenirs. I’ve got one framed in my studio — reg- 
ular little Fortuny — and the check is framed in 
with it. Never cashed it and never will. The Rajah, 
I tell you, old man, is very punctilious about his 
debts, no matter how small they are. Gave me fifteen 
shillings last time I went to Cairo to pay some 
duffer that lived up a street back of Shepheard’s, a 
red-faced Englishman who had helped Jack out of 
102 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
a hole the year before, and who would have pen- 
sioned the Rajah for life if he could have induced 
him to pass the rest of his years with him. And he 
only saw him for two days ! That’s the funny thing 
about Jack. He never forgets his creditors, and his 
creditors never forget him. I’ll tell you about this 
old Cairo lobster — that’s what he looked like — red 
and claw-y. 

“When I found him he was stretched in a chair 
trying to cool off ; he didn’t even have the decency 
to get on his feet. 

“ ‘Who.^’ he snapped out. Just as if I had been 
a book agent. 

“ ‘Mr. John Stirling of New York.’ 

“ ‘Owes me fifteen shillings ?’ 

“ ‘That’s what he said, and here it is,’ and I 
handed him the silver. 

“ ‘Young man,’ he says, glowering at me, ‘I 
don’t know what your game is, but I’ll tell you 
right here you can’t play it on me. Never heard of 
J/w#^r-John-Stirling-of-New-York in my life. So 
you can put your money back.’ I wasn’t going to 
be whipped by the old shell-fish, and then I didn’t 
103 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
like the way he spoke of Jack. I knew he was the 
right man, for Jack doesn’t make mistakes — not 
about things like that. So I went at him on another 
tack. 

« ‘Weren’t you up at Philae two years ago in a 
dahabieh .?’ 

“ ‘Yes.’ 

“‘And didn’t you meet four or five young Ameri- 
cans who came up on the steamer, and who got into 
a scrape over their fare?’ 

“ ‘I might — I can’t recollect everybody I meet — 
don’t want to^ — half of ’em — ’ All this time I was 
standing, remember. 

“ ‘And didn’t you — ’ I was going on to say, but 
he jumped from his chair and was fumbling about 
a bookcase. 

“ ‘Ah, here it is !’ he cried out. ‘Here’s a book of 
photographs of a whole raft of young fellows I met 
up the Nile on that trip. Most of ’em owed me some- 
thing and still do. Pick out the man now you say 
owes me fifteen shillings and wants to pay it.’ 

“ ‘There he is — one of those three.’ 

“The old fellow adjusted his glasses. 

104 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 


“ ‘The Rajah! That man! Know him? Best lad 
I ever met in my life. I’m damned if I take his 
money, and you can go home and tell him so.’ He 
did, though, and I sat with him until three o’clock 
in the morning talking about Jack, and I had all 
I could do getting away from him then. Wanted me 
to move in next day bag and baggage, and stay a 
month with him. He wasn’t so bad when I came to 
know him, if he was red and claw-y.” 

I again devoted my thoughts to the dinner — 
what I could spare from the remarkable personage 
Mamy had been discussing, and who still sat within 
a few tables of us. My friend’s story had opened 
up a new view of life, one that I had never expected 
to see personified in any one man. The old-fashioned 
rules by which I had been brought up — the rules 
of “An eye for an eye,” and “Earn thy bread by 
the sweat of thy brow,” etc. — seemed to have lost 
their meaning. The Rajah’s method, it seemed to 
me, if persisted in, might help solve the new prob- 
lem of the day — “the joy of living” — always a 
colossal joke with me. I determined to know some- 
thing more of this lazy apostle in a dress suit who 
105 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
dispensed sweetness and light at some other fellow’s 
expense. 

“Why do you call him ‘The Rajah,’ Marny?” I 
asked. 

“Oh, he got that in India. A lot of people like 
that old lobster in Cairo don’t know him by any 
other name.” 

“What did he do in India.?” 

“Nothing in particular — ^just kept on being 
himself — ^just as he does everywhere.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

“Well, I got it from Ashburton, a member of the 
Alpine Club in London. But everybody knows the 
story — wonder you haven’t heard it. You ought to 
come out of your hole, old man, and see what’s 
going on in the world. You live up in that den of 
yours, and the procession goes by and you don’t 
even hear the band. You ought to know Jack — 
he’d do you a lot of good,” and Mamy looked at 
me curiously — as a physician would, who, when he 
prescribes for you, tells you only one-half of your 
ailment. 

I did not interrupt my friend — I wasn’t getting 

106 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
thousands for a child’s head, and twice that price 
for the mother in green silk and diamonds. And 
I couldn’t afford to hang out my window and watch 
any kind of procession, figurative or otherwise. 
Nor could I afford to exchange dinners with John 
Stirling. 

“Do you want me to tell you about that time the 
Rajah had in India Well, move your glass this 
way,” and my host picked up the ’84. “Ashburton,” 
continued Marny, and he filled my glass to the brim, 
“is one of those globe-trotters who does mountain- 
tops for exercise. He knows the Andes as well as he 
does the glaciers in Switzerland; has been up the 
Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, and every other snow- 
capped peak within reach, and so he thought he’d 
try the Himalayas. You know how these English- 
men are — the rich ones. At twenty-five a good many 
1 of them have exhausted life. Some shoot tigers, some 
fit out caravans and cross deserts, some get lost in 
African jungles, and some come here and go out 
West for big game ; anything that will keep them 
from being bored to death before they are thirty- 
five years of age. Ashburton was that kind. 

107 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


“He had only been home ten days — he had spent 
two years in Yucatan looking up Toltec ruins — 
when this Himalaya trip got into his head. Ques- 
tion was, whom could he get to go with him, for 
these fellows hate to be alone. Some of the men he 
wanted hadn’t returned from their own wild-goose 
chases ; others couldn’t get away — one was running 
for Parliament, I think — and so Ashburton, curs- 
ing his luck, had about made up his mind to try 
it alone, when he ran across Jack one day in the 
club. 

“ ‘Hello, Stirling ! Thought you’d sailed for 
America.’ 

“ ‘No,’ said Jack, ‘I go next week. What are you 
doing here F Thought you had gone to India.’ 

“ ‘Can’t get anybody to go with me,’ answered 
Ashburton. 

“ ‘Where do you go first 

“ ‘To Calcutta by steamer, and then strike in and 
up to the foot-hills.’ 

“ ‘For how long.?’ 

“ ‘About a year. Come with me like a decent 
man.’ 


108 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 


“ ‘Can’t. Only got money enough to get home, 
and I don’t like climbing.’ 

“ ‘Money hasn’t got anything to do with it — 
you go as my guest. As to climbing, you won’t have 
to climb an inch. I’ll leave you at the foot-hills in a 
bungalow, with somebody to take care of you, and 
you can stay there until I come back.’ 

“ ‘How long will you be climbing?’ 

“ ‘About two months.’ 

“ ‘When do you start.?’ 

“ ‘To-morrow, at daylight.’ 

“ ‘All right, I’ll be on board.’ 

“Going out, Jack got up charades and all sorts 
of performances ; rescued a man overboard, striking 
the water about as soon as the man did, and hold- 
ing on to him until the lifeboat reached them ; stud- 
ied navigation and took observations every day 
until he learned how ; started a school for the chil- 
dren — there were a dozen on board — and told them 
fairy tales by the hour ; and by the time the steamer 
reached Calcutta every man, woman, and child had 
fallen in love with him. One old Maharajah, who was 
on board, took such a fancy to him that he insisted 
109 ^ 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
on Jack’s spending a year with him, and there came 
near being a precious row when he refused, which 
of course he had to do, being Ashburton’s guest. 

“When the two got to where Jack was to camp 
out and wait for Ashburton’s return from his climb 
— it was a little spot called Bungpore — the Eng- 
lishman fitted up a place just as he said he would; 
left two men to look after him — one to cook and 
the other to wait on him — fell on Jack’s neck, for 
he hated the worst kind to leave him, and disap- 
peared into the brush with his retainers — or what- 
ever he did disappear into and with — I never 
climbed the Himalayas, and so I’m a little hazy 
over these details. And that’s the last Ashburton 
saw of Jack until he returned two months later.” 

Marny emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from 
his cigarette, beckoned to the waiter, and gave him 
an order for a second bottle of ’84. During the 
break in the story I made another critical exam- 
ination of the hero, as he sat surrounded by his 
guests, his face beaming, the light falling on his 
immaculate shirt-front. I noted the size of his arm 
and the depth of his chest, and his lithe, muscular 
110 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
thighs. I noticed, too, how quickly he gained his 
feet when welcoming a friend, who had just stopped 
at his table. I understood now how the drowning 
sailor came to be saved. 

The wine matter settled, Mamy took some fresh 
cigarettes from his silver case, passed one to me, 
and held a match to both in turn. Between the puffs 
I again brought the talk back to the man who now 
interested me intensely. I was afraid we would be 
interrupted and I have to wait before finding out 
why his friend was called the “Rajah.” 

“I should think he would have gone with him 
instead of staying behind and living off his 
bounty,” I ventured. 

“Yes — I know you would, old man, but Jack 
thought differently, not being built along your 
lines. You’ve got to know him — I tell you, he’ll do 
you a lot of good. Stirling saw that, if he went, it 
would only double Ashburton’s expense account, 
and so he squatted down to wait with just money 
enough to get along those two months, and not an- 
other cent. Told Ashburton he wanted to learn Hin- 
dustanee, and he couldn’t do it if he was sliding 
111 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
down glaciers and getting his feet wet — it would 
keep him from studying.” 

“And was Stirling waiting for him when Ash- 
burton came back.?” 

“Waiting for him! Well, I guess! First thing 
Ashburton ran up against was one of the black- 
amoors he had hired to take care of Jack. When 
he had left the fellow he was clothed in a full 
suit of yellow dust with a rag around his loins. 
Now he was gotten up in a red turban and paja- 
mas trimmed with gewgaws. The blackamoor 
prostrated himself and began kotowing backward 
toward a marquee erected on a httle knoll under 
some trees and surrounded by elephants in gorgeous 
trappings. ‘The Rajah of Bungpore’ — that was 
Jack — ‘had sent him,’ he said, ‘to conduct his Royal 
Highness into the presence of his illustrious 
master !’ 

“When Ashburton reached the door of the 
marquee and peered in, he saw Jack lying back 
on an Oriental couch at the other end smoking the 
pipe of the country — whatever that was — and sur- 
rounded by a collection of Hottentots of various 
112 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
sizes and colors, who fell on their foreheads every 
time Jack crooked his finger. At his feet knelt two 
Hindoo merchants displaying their wares — pearls, 
ivories, precious stones, arms, porcelains — stuff’s 
of a quality and price, Ashburton told me, that took 
his breath away. Jack kept on — ^he made out he 
didn’t see Ashburton — his slaves bearing the pur- 
chases away and depositing them on a low inlaid 
table — teakwood, I guess — in one corner of the 
marquee, while a confidential Lord of the Treasury 
took the coin of the realm from a bag or gourd — 
or whatever he did take it from — and paid the shot. 

“When the audience was over. Jack waved every- 
body outside with a commanding gesture, and still 
lolling on his rugs — or maybe his tiger skins — told 
his Grand Vizier to conduct the strange man to his 
august presence. Then Jack rose from this throne, 
dismissed the Grand Vizier, and fell into Ashbur- 
ton’s arms roaring with laughter.” 

“And Ashburton had to foot the bills, I sup- 
pose,” I blurted out. It is astonishing how suspi- 
cious and mean a man gets sometimes who mixes 
as little as I do with what Marny calls “the swim.” 
113 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


“Ashburton foot the bills ! Not much ! Listen, you 
six by nine ! Stirling hadn’t been alone more than a 
week when along comes the Maharajah he had met 
on the steamer. He lived up in that part of the 
country, and one of his private detectives had told 
him that somebody was camping out on his lot. 
Down he came in a white heat, with a bag of bow- 
strings and a squad of the ‘Finest’ in pink trousers 
and spears. I get these details all wrong, old man 
— they might have been in frock-coats for all I 
know or care^ — ^but what I’m after is the Oriental 
atmosphere — a sort of property background with 
my principal figure high up on the canvas — and 
one costume is as good as another. 

“When the old Maharajah found out it was Jack 
instead of some squatter, he fell all over himself 
with joy. Wanted to take him up to his marble 
palace, open up everything, unlock a harem, trot 
out a half-dozen chorus girls ,in bangles and 
mosquito-net bloomers, and do a lot of comfortable 
things for him. But Jack said No. He was put here 
to stay, and here he was going to stay if he had to 
call out every man in his army. The old fellow saw 
114 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
the joke and said all right, here he should stay ; and 
before night he had moved down a tent, and a body- 
guard, and an elephant or two for local color, so as 
to make it real Oriental for Jack, and the next day 
he sent him down a bag of gold, and servants, and 
a cook. Every pedler who appeared after that he 
passed along to Jack, and before Ashburton turned 
up Stirling had a collection of curios worth a 
fortune. One-half of them he gave to Ashburton 
and the other half be brought home to his friends. 
That inlaid elephant’s tusk hanging up in my 
studio is one of them — ^you remember it.” 

As Marny finished, one of the waiters who had 
been serving Stirling and his guests approached 
our table under the direction of the Rajah’s finger, 
and, bending over Marny, whispered something in 
his ear. He had the cashier’s slip in his hand and 
Stirling’s visiting card. 

Marny laid the bill beside his plate, glanced at 
the card with a laugh, his face lighting up, and 
then passed it to me. It read as follows : “Not a red 
and no credit. Sign it for Jack.” 

Marny raised his eyes, nodded his head at Stir- 

115 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
ling, kissed his finger-tips at him, fished up his gold 
chain, slid out a pencil dangling at its end, wrote 
his name across the slip, and said in a whisper to the 
waiter: “Take this to the manager and have him 
charge it to my account.” 

When we had finished our dinner and were pass- 
ing out abreast of Stirling’s table, the Rajah rose 
to his feet, his guests all standing about him, their 
glasses in their hands — Riggs’s whiskers stood 
straight, he was so happy — and, waving his own 
glass toward my host, said: “Gentlemen, I give 
you Marny, the Master, the Velasquez of modem 
times !” 


Some weeks later I called at Marny’s studio. He 
was out. On the easel stood a full-length portrait 
of Riggs, the millionaire, his thin, hatchet-shaped 
face and white whiskers in high relief against a 
dark background. Scattered about the room were 
smaller heads bearing a strong resemblance to the 
great president. Jack had evidently corralled the 
entire family — and all out of that dinner at 
Sherry’s. 


116 


THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE 
I shut the door of Marny’s studio softly behind 
me, tiptoed downstairs, dropped into a restaurant 
under the sidewalk, and dined alone. 

Mamy is right. The only way to hear the hand 
is to keep up with the procession. 

My philosophy is a failure. 


♦ 


117 


i 


THE SOLDO OF THE 
CASTELLANI 


THE SOLDO OF THE 
CASTELLANI 


T HE Via Garibaldi is astir to-day. From the 
Ponte Veneta Marina, next the cafFe of the same 
name — it is but a step — to the big iron gates of 
the Public Gardens, is a moving throng of Vene- 
tians, their chatter filling the soft September air. 
Flags are waving — all kinds of flags, and of all 
colors; gay lanterns of quaint patterns are fes- 
tooned from window to window; old velvets and 
rare stuffs, some in rags and tatters, so often 
have they been used, stream out from the balco- 
nies crowded with pretty Venetians shading their 
faces with their parasols as they watch the crowds 
below. In and out of this mass of holiday-makers 
move the pedlers crying their wares, some sell- 
ing figs, their scales of pohshed brass jingling 
as they walk; some with gay handkerchiefs and 
U1 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
scarfs draped about their trays; here and there 
one stands beside a tripod holding a big earthen 
dish filled with fulpi — miniature devil-fish about as 
big as a toad — so ugly that no man, however hun- 
gry, except, perhaps, a Venetian, dares swallow one 
with his eyes open. 

Along this stretch of waving flags, gay-colored 
lanterns, and joyous people, are two places where 
the throngs are thickest. One is the Caffe Veneta 
Marina, its door within a cigarette’s toss of the 
first step of the curving bridge of the same name, 
and the other is the Caffe Beneto, a smaller caffe 
farther down the wide street — wide for Venice. The 
Caffe Veneta Marina contains but a single room 
level with the street, and on gala days its tables 
and chairs are pushed quite out upon the marble 
flags. The Caffe Beneto runs through to the wa- 
ters of the Grand Canal and opens on a veranda 
fitted with a short flight of steps at which the gon- 
dolas often land their passengers. 

These two cafiPes are the headquarters of two 
opposing factions of gondoliers, enemies for cen- 
turies, since the founding of their guild, in fact 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


— the Nicolletti, whose caps in the old days were 
black, and the Castellani, whose caps were red. The 
first were publicans, renowned for their prowess 
with the oar, but rough and outspoken, boastful 
in victory, bitter in defeat. The second were aris- 
tocrats, serving the Doge and often of great ser- 
vice to the State — ^men distinguished for their 
courtesy as well as for their courage. These attri- 
butes have followed these two guilds down to the 
present day. 

Every year when the leaves of the sycamores in 
the Public Gardens fade into brown gold, and the 
great dome of the Salute, glistening like a huge 
pink pearl, looms above the soft September haze 
that blurs the water line, these two guilds — the 
Nicolletti and Castellani — meet in combat, each 
producing its best oarsmen. 

To-day the course is from the wall of the Public 
Gardens to the Lido and back. Young Francesco 
Portera, the idol of the shipyards, a big-boned 
Venetian, short-armed and strong, is to row for the 
Nicolletti, and Luigi Zanaletto, a man near twice 
his age, for the Castellani. 

123 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

For days there has been no other talk than this 
gondola race. Never in any September has the bet- 
ting run so high. So great is the interest in the 
contest that every morning for a week the line of 
people at the Monte di Pieta — the Government 
pawn shop — ^has extended out into the great cor- 
ridor of the Palazzo, every arm and pocket filled 
with clothing, jewels, knick-knacks, everything 
the owners can and cannot spare, to be pawned 
in exchange for the money needed to bet on this 
race. 

There is good cause for this unusual excitement. 
While Luigi is known as the successful winner of 
the four annual races preceding this one, carrying 
the flag of the Castellani to victory against all 
comers, and each year a new contestant, many of 
his enemies insist that the pace has told on him; 
that despite his great reach of arm and sinewy 
legs, his strength, by reason of his age — they are 
all old at forty in Venice (except the Castellani) — 
is failing, and that for him to win this fifth and 
last race would be more than any guild could ex- 
pect, glorious as would be the result. Others, more 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 
knowing, argued that while Francesco had an arm 
like a blacksmith and could strike a blow that would 
fell an ox, he lacked that refinement of training 
which made the ideal oarsman; that it was not so 
much the size or quality of the muscles as it was 
the man who used them; that blood and brains 
were more than brute force. 

Still another feature added zest and interest to 
the race, especially to members of the opposing 
guilds. There was an unwritten law of Venice that 
no man of either guild could win more than five 
races in succession — a foolish law, many thought, 
for no oarsman had accomplished it. This done, the 
victor retired on his laurels. Ever after he became 
Primo — the envied of his craft, the well-beloved 
of all the women of his quarter, young and old 
alike. Should Luigi Zanaletto win this fifth race, 
no Nicolletti could show their faces for very shame 
on the Piazza. For weeks thereafter they would 
be made the butt of the good-natured badinage of 
the populace. If, however, Luigi should lose this 
fifth and last race, the spell would be broken and 
some champion of the Nicolletti — ^perhaps this very 
125 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
Francesco, with the initiative of this race, might 
gain succeeding victories and so the Nicolletti re- 
gain the ground they had lost through Luigi’s 
former prowess. 

Those of his guild, however, those who knew 
and loved Luigi, had no such misgivings as to the 
outcome. They lost no sleep over his expected de- 
feat. As their champion stepped from his gondola 
this beautiful September morning, laying his oar 
along its side, and mounted the marble steps of the 
landing opposite the Caffe Veneta Marina, those 
who got close enough to note his superb condition 
only added to their wagers. Six feet and an inch, 
straight, with willowy arms strengthened by steel 
cords tied in knots above the elbows, hauled taut 
along the wrists and anchored in the hands — grips 
of steel, these hands, with thumbs and forefingers 
strong as the jaws of a vice (he wields and guides 
his oar with these) ; waist like a woman’s, the ribs 
outlined through the cross-barred boating shirt; 
back and stomach in-curved, laced and clamped by 
a red sash; thighs and calves of lapped leather; 
shoulders a beam of wood — square, hard, unyield- 
126 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


ing; neck an upward sweep tanned to a ruddy 
brown, ending in a mass of black hair, curly as a 
dog’s and as strong and glistening. 

And his face! Stop some morning before the 
church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, and look up into 
the face of the great Colleoni as he sits bestride 
his bronze horse, and ask the noble soldier to doff 
his helmet. Then follow the firm lines of the mouth, 
the wide brow, strong nose, and iron chin. Add to 
this a skin bronzed to copper by the sun, a pair of 
laughing eyes, and an out-pointed mustache, and 
you have Luigi. 

And the air of the man I Only gondoliers, of all 
serving-men, have this humble fearlessness of man- 
ner — a manner which combines the dignity of the 
patrician with the humility of the servant. It is 
their calling which marks the difference. Small as 
is the gondola among all water craft, the gondolier 
is yet its master, free to come and free to go. The 
wide stretch of the sea is his — not another’s: a 
sea hemmed about by the palaces of ancestors who 
for ten centuries dominated the globe. 

• •••••• 


in 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


But Luigi is still standing on the marble steps 
of the landing opposite the Caffe Veneta Marina 
this lovely September day, doffing his cap to the 
admiring throng, just as Colleoni would have 
doffed his, and with equal grace. Not the red cap 
of his guild — that has been laid aside for two 
centuries — ^but his wide straw hat, with his colors 
wound about it. 

As he made his way slowly through the crowd 
toward the caffe, an old woman who had been 
waiting for him — ^wrinkled, gray-haired, a black 
shawl about her head held tight to the chin by 
her skinny fingers, her eyes peering from its folds 
— stepped in front of him. She lived near his 
home and was godmother to one of his children. 

“Luigi Zanaletto!” she cried, catching him by 
the wrist. 

“Yes, good mother.” 

“That idiot Marco told my Amalia last night 
that you will lose the race. He has been to the 
Pieta and will bet all his money on Francesco.” 

“And why not, good mother.? Why do you 
worry.?” 


128 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


“Because the two fools will have no money to be 
married on. They are called in San Rosario next 
Sunday, and the next is their wedding-day. He 
has pawned the boat his uncle gave him.” 

“And if he wins?” 

“He will not win, Luigi. When that brute came 
in from the little race we had last week I was pass- 
ing in a sandolo on my way to San Giorgio. 
He was panting like a child after a run. If he 
had no breath left in him then, where will he be 
to-day ?” 

“One cannot tell, good mother. Who told the boy 
I would lose the race?” 

“Beppo Cavalli.” 

“Ah ! the Nicolletti,” muttered Luigi. 

“Yes.” 

“He has a boy, too, has he not, good mother?” 

“Yes, Amalia loved him once; now she loves 
Marco. These girls are like the wind, Luigi. They 
never blow two days alike.” 

Luigi stopped and looked out toward the la- 
goon. He knew Cavalli. In summer he rowed a 
barca; in winter he kept a wine shop and sold 
129 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
untaxed salt and smuggled cigarettes to his cus- 
tomers. The crowd pressed closer, listening. 

“Beppo Cavalli, good mother,” he said, slowly, 
“means ill to the boy Marco and to your daughter. 
The Cavallis are not backing Francesco. They talk 
loud, but there is not a soldo for him among them. 
Cavalli would get that girl for his son; she is 
pretty and would bring customers to his shop. 
Where is Marco 

“He is at the Caffe Beneto with Cavalli and 
Francesco. I have tired my tongue out talking to 
Marco, and so has Amalia. His head is fixed like a 
stone. Francesco is getting ready for this after- 
noon, but it will do him no good. He has not arms 
like this. Is it not so, men — and she lifted Luigi’s 
arm and held it up that the crowd might see. 

A great cheer went up in answer, and was echoed 
by the crowd about the caffe door. Luigi among 
the people of his quarter was like their religion. 

The champion had now reached one of the tables 
of the caffe. Drawing out a chair, he bent forward, 
shook hands with old Guido, the proprietor, 
crooked his fingers gallantly at a group of women 
130 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 
in an overhanging balcony, and was just taking 
his seat when a young girl edged her way through 
the circle and slipped her arm around the woman’s 
neck. She had the low brow surmounted by masses 
of jet-black hair, drooping, sleepy eyelids shading 
slumbering, passionate eyes, sensitive sweet mouth 
and oval face common to her class. About her 
shoulders was draped a black shawl, its fringes lost 
in the folds of her simple gown. 

“Oh, Amalia!” cried the woman, “has this boy 
of yours given up his money yet.?” 

“No, mother, he has promised to wait till I come 
back. Marco is like a wild man when I talk. I 
thought Luigi would speak to him if I asked him. 
Please, dear Luigi, do not let him lose his money. 
We are ruined if he bets on Francesco.” 

Luigi reached out his hand and drew the girl 
toward him. His own daughter at home had just 
such a look in her eyes whenever she was in trouble 
and came to him for help. 

“How much will he bet, child.?” he asked in a 
low voice. 

“Every soldo he has. Cavalli talks to him all the 

131 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

time. They are like crazy people over there at the 
Beneto. Ah, good Luigi, do not win ! I am so un- 
happy!” and the tears gathered in her eyes. 

Luigi, still holding her hand, laughed gently as 
he looked up into her face. The others who had 
heard the girl’s plea laughed with him. 

“Go, child, and bring Marco here to me. Cavalli 
shall not ruin you both, if I can help it.” 

The girl pushed her hair back from her flushed 
face, drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, 
bent her pretty head, wormed her way out of the 
dense throng pressing in upon the table, and ran 
with all her might toward the Caffe Beneto, fol- 
lowed by her mother. 

In a few minutes the two were back again, their 
arms fast locked in those of a young fellow of 
twenty — they marry young under Italian suns — 
who stood looking at Luigi with curious, wondering 
eyes. Not that he did not know the champion — 
every man in Venice knew him — ^but because Cavalli 
had pictured Luigi as of doubtful strength, and 
the Luigi before him did not fit Cavalli’s measure. 

“Marco,” said Luigi, a smile crossing his face. 

132 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


“Yes, Signore Zanaletto,” answered the boy. 

“Come nearer.” 

The young fellow advanced to the table. The 
others who had been near enough to learn of the 
girl’s errand crowded the closer. Every utterance 
of a champion on a day like this is of value. 

“You should be at work, boy, not betting on 
the race. You earn your living with your hands; 
that is better than Cavalli’s way ; he earns his with 
his tongue. I am nearly twice your age and have 
rowed many times, but I have never yet wagered 
as much as a soldo on any race of mine. Give 
your money to the good mother, and let her take it 
to the Pieta and get your boat. You will need it 
before the month is out, she tells me.” 

The boy hung his head and did not answer. 

“Why do you think I shall lose.^ Have I not 
won four already.^” 

“Yes, but every year the signore gets older; you 
are not so strong as you were. And then, no man 
has won five races in fifty years. It is the Nicol- 
letti’s year to win, Cavalli says.” 

A cheer here went up from the outside of the 

133 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
crowd. Some of the NicoUetti who had followed 
the boy had been listening. 

“Cavalh should read his history better. It is not 
fifty years, but sixty. But we Italians work for our- 
selves now, and are free. That counts for some- 
thing.” 

“Francesco works. Signore Zanaletto. He has 
arms like my leg.” 

“Yes, and for that reason you think him the 
stronger 

“I did when Cavalli talked to me. Now I am in 
doubt.” 

The cheer that answered this reply came from 
some CasteUani standing in the door of the caffe. 
When the cheering slackened a man on the outside 
of the crowd called out: 

“Your Luigi is a coward. He will not bet be- 
cause he knows he’U lose.” 

At this a big stevedore from the salt warehouse 
lunged toward Luigi and threw a silver lira on 
his table. 

“Match that for Francesco !” he cried. 

Luigi pushed it back. 

134 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


“When I bet it will be with my equal,” he said, 
icily. 

A laugh of derision followed, in which Marco 
joined. The boy evidently thought the champion 
was afraid to risk his own money and make his 
word good. Boys of twenty often have such stand- 
ards. 

“Bet with Francesco, then. Signore Zanaletto,” 
cried the stevedore. “He is twice your equal.” 

“Yes, bring him here,” answered Luigi, quietly. 

Half a dozen men, led by the big stevedore, made 
a rush for the Caffe Beneto. While they were gone, 
Marco, with Amalia and her mother, kept their 
places beside Luigi’s table, chatting together in low 
tones. Luigi’s refusal to bet with the stevedore and 
his willingness to bet with his opponent had un- 
settled Marco’s mind all the more. Marriage, with 
him as with most of the people of his class, meant 
just money enough to pay the priest and to defray 
expenses of existence for a month. He would take 
his chances after that. They might both go to work 
again then, she back to her beads and he to his 
boat, but they would have had their holiday, and 
135 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


a holiday is the one thing valued above all others 
by most Venetians. Should he lose, however, he 
must give up the girl for the present — ^the pretti- 
est in all the quarter. And then perhaps Beppo 
Cavalli’s son might find favor again in her eyes. 

Amalia’s anxiety was none the less keen. She had 
thrown over Cavalli’s son for Marco, and if any- 
thing should go wrong the whole quarter would 
laugh at her. The two continued to ply Luigi with 
questions: as to who would win the toss for posi- 
tion; whether the wind would be against them; 
whether the water would be rough where the tide 
cut around the point of San Giorgio — all of which 
Marco, being a good boatman, could have settled 
for himself had his mind been normal. As they 
talked on, Luigi read their minds. Reason and com- 
mon sense had evidently made no impression on the 
boy ; he was not to be influenced in that way. Some- 
thing stronger and more obvious, some demonstra- 
tion that he could understand, was needed. Amalia’s 
mother was his friend, and had been for years; 
what he could do to help her he would, no matter 
at what cost. 


136 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 

The throng parted again, and the stevedore, out 
of breath, forced his way into the circle. 

“The great Francesco says he comes at no man’s 
call. He is a Nicolletti. If any Castellani wants to 
see him he must come to him. He will wait for 
you at the Beneto.” 

A shout went up, and a rush to avenge the insult 
was only stopped by Luigi gaining his feet and 
raising his hand. 

“Tell him,” he said, in a clear voice, loud enough 
for everyone to hear, “that there is no need of his 
saying he is a Nicolletti; we would know it from 
his message. Come, boy. I’ll show you of what stuff 
this gentleman is made.” 

The crowd fell back, Luigi striding along, his 
hand on Marco’s shoulder. The champion could 
hardly conceal a smile of triumph as he neared the 
door of the Caffe Beneto, which opened to let them 
in. The two passed through the long passage into 
the room opening out on the veranda and the water 
beyond. Francesco sat at a table with his back to 
a window, sipping a glass of wine diluted with 
water. Cavalli, his head bound with a yellow hand- 

137 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
kerchief, the colors of the Nicolletti, a scowl on his 
face, sat beside him. Every inch of standing room 
was blocked with his admirers. 

‘‘Signore Francesco,” said Luigi, courteously, 
removing his hat, “I understand that you want to 
lose some money on the race. I have come to accom- 
modate you. How much shall it be.?” 

“Ten lire!” cried one of the officers of the re- 
gatta, pouring some silver beside Francesco’s hand 
as it rested on the table. “Put your money here. Sig- 
nore Zanaletto. Our good landlord will hold the 
stakes.” 

“The money is not enough,” answered Luigi. 
“I am the challenged party, and have the right to 
choose. Is it not so.?” 

“Yes, yes,” cried half a dozen voices; “make it 
fifty lire! We are not lazagnoni. We have money 
— plenty of it. See, Signore Castellani” — and 
half a dozen palms covered with small coin were 
extended. 

“I can choose, then, the kind of money and the 
sum,” continued Luigi. 

“Yes, gold, silver, paper — anything you want !” 

138 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 


“Then, gentle Nicolletti,” said Luigi, in his soft- 
est and most courteous voice, “if you will permit 
me, I will choose the poor man’s money. Match this. 
Signore Francesco,” and he threw a copper soldo 
(a coin the size and thickness of an English penny) 
upon the table. “It is yours if you win.” 

A roar of laughter greeted the announcement. 
Francesco sprang to his feet. 

“I am not here to be made a fool of ! I don’t bet 
with soldi! I throw them to beggars!” he cried, 
angrily. 

“Pardon me, signore. Was it not agreed that I 
had the choice.?” 

Some muttering was heard at this, but no one 
answered. 

“Let us see your soldo, then, signore,” continued 
Luigi. “The race is the thing, not the money. A 
soldo is as good as a gold piece with which to back 
one’s opinions. Come, I am waiting.” 

Francesco thrust his hand into his pocket, hauled 
up a handful of small coin, picked out a soldo and 
threw it contemptuously on the table. 

“There — ^will that do.?” 

139 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

Luigi picked up the copper coin, examined it 
carefully, and tossed it back on the table. 

“It is not of the right kind, signore. The stamp 
is wrong. We Castellani are very particular as to 
what money we wager and win.” 

The crowd craned their heads. If it was a coun- 
terfeit, they would put up another. This, however, 
did not seem to be Luigi’s meaning. The boy 
Marco was so absorbed in the outcome that he 
reached forward to pick up the coin to examine 
it the closer when Luigi stopped him with his 
hand. 

“What’s the matter with the soldo?” growled 
Francesco, scrutinizing the pieces, “isn’t it good?” 

“Good enough, perhaps, for beggars, signore, 
and good enough, no doubt, for Nicolletti. But it 
lacks the stamp of the Castellani. Hand it to me, 
please, and I will put the mark of my guild upon 
it. Look, good Signore Francesco !” 

As he spoke, Luigi caught the coin between his 
thumb and forefinger, clutched it with a grip of 
steel, and with a twist of his thumb bent the copper 
soldo to the shape of a watch crystal ! 

140 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLAN! 

“That kind of a soldo, signore,” he said in a 
low tone, as he tossed the concave coin back upon 
the table. “Match it, please! Here, try your fin- 
gers on my coin I Come, I am waiting. You do not 
answer. Signore Francesco. Why did you send for 
me, then.f^ Had I known that your money was not 
ready I would not have left my caffe. Perhaps, how- 
ever, some other distinguished Nicolletti can find 
some money good enough with which to bet a Cas- 
tellani,” and he looked about him. “No.? I am sorry, 
gentlemen, very sorry. Addio!” and he picked up 
the bent coin, slipped it into his pocket, bowed like 
a doge to the room, and passed out through the 
door. 

• •••••• 

In the dense mass that lined the wall of the 
Public Gardens a girl and her lover stood with 
anxious eyes and flushed, hot cheeks, watching the 
home-stretch of the two contestants. 

Francesco and Luigi, cheered by the shouts of a 
thousand throats, had reached the stake-boat off 
the Lido and were now swinging back to the goal 
of the Garden wall, both bending to their blades, 
141 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
Luigi half a length behind, Francesco straining 
every nerve. Waves of red and of gold — the colors 
of the two guilds — surged and flashed from out the 
mass of spectators as each oarsman would gain or 
lose an inch. 

Behind the lover and the girl stood the girl’s 
mother, her black shawl twisted into a scarf. 
This she waved as heartily as the youngest about 
her. 

“Don’t cry, you fools !” she stopped long enough 
to shout in Amalia’s ear. “It is his old way. Wait 
till he reaches the red buoy. Ah! what did I tell 
you! Luigi! Luigi! Bravo Castellani! See, Marco 
— see ! Ah, Signore Francesco, your wind is gone, is 
it.? You should nurse bambinos with those big arms 
of yours. Ah, look at him ! Amaha, what did I tell 
you, you two fools !” 

Marco did not answer. He was holding on to 
the marble coping of the wall, his teeth set, his lips 
quivering, his eyes fixed on Francesco’s body in sil- 
houette against the glistening sea. Luigi’s long 
swing, rhythmical as a machine’s, graceful as the 
curves of a wind sail, did not seem to interest him. 

m 


SOLDO OF THE CASTELLANI 
The boy had made his bet, and he would abide by 
it, but he would not tell the mother until the race 
was won. He had had enough of her tongue. 

Suddenly Luigi clenched his thumb and fore- 
finger tight about the handle of his oar, and with 
the sweep of a yacht gaining her goal headed 
straight for the stake-post, in full sight of the 
thousands lining the walls. 

A great shout went up. Red flags, red parasols, 
rags, blankets, anything that told of Luigi’s col- 
ors, rose and fluttered in the sunlight. 

^^Primo! PrimoP' yelled the crowd. “Viva Cas- 
tellani ! Viva Zanaletto !” 

Then, while the whole concourse of people held 
their breaths, their hearts in their mouths, Luigi 
with his fingers turned to steel, shot past Francesco 
with the dash of a gull, and amid the shouts of 
thousands lifted his victorious hat to the multitude. 

For the first time in sixty years the same pair 
of arms had won five races ! 

Luigi was Primo and the Castellani the victors 
of the sea. 

• ••••• M 


143 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

When Luigi’s boat had reached the main land- 
ing of the Gardens and he had mounted the great 
flight of marble steps, a hundred hands held out 
to him joyous welcome. Amalia, who had forced 
her way to his side, threw her arms about his neck. 

“Did the boy bet, child he asked, wiping the 
sweat from his face. 

“Yes, signore.” 

“On Francesco.?” 

“No, dear Luigi, on you ! Oh, I am so happy !” 

“And what changed his mind.?” 

“The soldo !” 

“The soldo ! That makes me happy, too. Add it 
to your dowry, child,” and he placed the coin in 
her hand. 

She wears it now as a charm. The good priest 
blessed it with her wedding-ring. 


144 


A POINT 


OF HONOR 



« 


; I 
♦ 


I 


« 


f; 

f 


t 


1 



J 


A POINT OF HONOR 


I 

T HE omnibus stopped in the garden, or, to be 
more exact, at the porch of the hotel opening into 
the garden. Not the ordinary omnibus with a flap- 
ping door fastened with a strap leading to the 
boot-leg of the man on top, a post-office box in- 
side with a glass front, holding a smoky kerosene 
lamp, and two long pew-cushioned seats placed so 
close together that everybody rubs everybody else’s 
knees when it is full ; not that kind of an omnibus 
at all, but a wide, low, yellow-painted (yellow as 
a canary), morocco-cushioned, go-to-the-theatre-in 
kind of an omnibus drawn b/ a pair of stout Nor- 
mandy horses, with two men in livery on the box in 
front and another on the lower step behind who 
helps you in and out and takes your bundles and 
does any number of delightful and courteous 
things. 

il4T 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

This yellow-painted chariot, moreover, was just 
the kind of a vehicle that should have moved in and 
out of this flower-decked garden. Not only did its 
color harmonize with the surroundings — quite as a 
mass of yellow nasturtiums harmonizes with the 
peculiar soft green of its leaves — but its appoint- 
ments were quite in keeping with the luxury and 
distinction of the place. For only millionnaires 
and princes, and people who travel with valets and 
maids, and now and then a staid old painter like 
myself who is willing to be tucked away anywhere, 
but whose calling is supposed to lend eclat to the 
register, are ever to be found there. 

The omnibus, then, stopped at the hotel porch 
and in front of the manager, who stood with a 
bunch of telegrams in his hand. Behind him smiled 
the clerk, and on his right bowed the Lord High 
Porter in gold lace and buttons : everything is done 
in the best and most approved style at the Baur au 
Lac in Zurich. 

“Did you telegraph, sir.? No? Well — let — me — 
see — Ah, yes ! I remember — you were here last 
year. Number 13, Fritz, on the second floor” (this 
148 


A POINT OF HONOR 

to a boy), and the manager passed on and saluted 
the other passengers — two duchesses in silk dusters, 
a count in a straw hat with a green ribbon, and two 
Italian nobleman in low collars and mustaches. At 
least, they must have been noblemen or something 
better, judging from the profundity of the man- 
ager’s bow and the alacrity with which Fritz, the 
boy, let go my bag and picked up three of theirs. 

Another personage now stepped up — a little man 
with the eyes of a fox — a courier whom I had not 
seen for years. 

“Why, Joseph! where did you drop from.^” I 
asked. 

“From the Engadine, my Lord, and I hope your 
Lordship is most well.” 

“Pretty well, Joseph. What are you doing 
here.?” 

“It is an Englishman — a lame Englishman — a 
matter of two weeks only. And you, my Lord.?” 

“Just from Venice, on my way back to Paris,” I 
answered. 

By this time the manager was gazing with his 
eyes twice their size, and the small boy was stand- 
149 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


ing in the middle of a heap of bags, wondering 
which one of the nobilities (including myself) he 
would serve first. 

Joseph had now divested me of my umbrella 
and sketch-trap and was facing the manager. 

“Did I hear that thirteen was the number of 
his Lordship’s room.?” he inquired of that gentle- 
man. “I will myself go. Give me the bag” (this to 
the boy). “This way, my Lord.” And he led the 
way through the cool hall filled with flowering 
plants and up a staircase panelled with mirrors. 
I followed contentedly behind. 

Joseph and I are old acquaintances. In my 
journey ings around Europe I frequently run across 
him. He and I have had some varied experiences to- 
gether in our time — the first in Milan at the Hotel 
Imperial. A young bride and groom, friends of 
mine — a blue-eyed, sweet-faced young girl with 
a husband but one year her senior (the two with a 
£2,000 letter of credit, the gift of a doting father) 
— had wired for rooms for the night at the Im- 
perial. It was about eight o’clock when the couple 
drove up in one of those Italian hacks cut low-neck 
150 


A POINT OF HONOR 
— a landau really — ^with coachman and footman on 
the box, and Joseph in green gloves and a silk hat 
on the front seat. My personal salutations over, we 
all mounted the stairs, preceded by the entire staff 
with the proprietor at their head. Here on the first 
landing we were met by two flunkeys in red and a 
blaze of electric light which revealed five rooms. In 
one was spread a game supper with every variety 
of salad known to an Italian lunch-counter; in 
another — the salon — stood a mass of roses the size 
and shape of an oleander in full bloom ; then came 
a huge bedroom, a bathroom and a boudoir. 

The groom, young as he was, knew how little 
was left of the letter of credit. The bride did not. 
Neither did Joseph. 

“What’s all this for, Homblend.^^” asked the 
groom, casting his eyes about in astonishment. 
Homblend is the other half of Joseph’s name. 

“For Monsieur and Madame.” 

“What, for one night?"' 

Joseph worked both shoulders and extended his 
red fingers — ^he had removed his gloves — ^till they 
looked like two bunches of carrots. 


151 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


“Does it not Monsieur please?” 

“Please! Do you think I’m a royal family?” 

The carrots collapsed, the shoulders stopped, and 
a pained expression overspread Joseph’s counte- 
nance. The criticisms had touched his heart. 

The groom and I put our heads together — mine 
is gray, and I have seen many couriers in my time. 
His was blond and curly, and Joseph was his first 
experience. 

I beckoned to the proprietor. 

“Who ordered this suite of rooms and all this 
tomfoolery ?” 

The man bowed and waved his hand loftily 
toward the groom. 

“How?” 

“By telegraph.” 

“Let me see the despatch.” 

One of the functionaries — ^the clerk — handed me 
the document. 

“Is this the only one ?” 

“Yes.” 

“It is signed ‘Joseph Homblend,’ you see.” 

“Yes.” 


152 


A POINT OF HONOR 

“Then let Hornblend pay for it. Now be good 
enough to show these young people to a bedroom, 
and send your head-waiter to me. We will all dine 
downstairs together in the cafe.” 

Since that night in Milan Joseph always has 
called me “my Lord.” 

He had altered but little. His legs were perhaps 
more bowed, the checks of his trousers a trifle larger, 
and the part in his iron-gray hair less regular than 
in the old days, but the general effect was the same 
— the same flashy waistcoat, the same long gold 
watch-chain baited with charms, the same shiny, 
bell-crown silk hat, and the same shade of green 
kid gloves — same pair, I think. Nor had his man- 
ner changed — that cringing, deferential, attentive 
manner which is so flattering at first to the unsus- 
pecting and inexperienced, and so positive and top- 
lofty when his final accounts are submitted — partic- 
ularly if they are disputed. The voice, too, had 
lost none of its soft, purring quality — a church- 
whisper-voice with the drone of the organ in it. 

And yet withal Joseph is not a bad fellow. Once 

153 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
he knows the size of your pocket-book he willingly 
adapts his expenditures to its contents. Ofttimes, it 
is true, there is nothing left but the pocket-book, 
but then some couriers would take that. When he is 
in doubt as to the amount, he tries experiments. I 
have learned since that the lay-out for the bride 
and groom that night in Milan was only one of his 
experiments — the proprietor being co-conspirator. 
The coach belonged to the hotel ; the game supper 
was moved up from the restaurant, and the flowers 
had been left over from a dinner the night before. 
Had they all done duty, Joseph’s commissions 
would have been that much larger. As it was, he col- 
lected his percentage only on the coach and the two 
men on the box and the flunkeys at the head of the 
stairs. These had been used. The other preparations 
were only looked at. 

Then again, Joseph not only speaks seven lan- 
guages, but he speaks them well — for Joseph — 
so much so that a stranger is never sure of his 
nationality. 

“Are you French, Joseph.?” I once asked him. 

“No.” 


154s 


A POINT OF HONOR 


“Dutch?” 

“No.” 

“What, then?” 

“I am a Jew gentleman from Germany.” 

He lied, of course. He’s a Levantine from Con- 
stantinople, with Greek, Armenian, Hindu, and per- 
haps some Turkish blood in his veins. This com- 
bination insures him good temper, capacity, and 
imagination — not a bad mixture for a courier. Be- 
sides, he is reasonably honest — not punctiliously so 
— not as to francs, perhaps, but certainly as to 
fifty-pound notes — that is, he was while he served 
me. Of course, I never had a fifty-pound note — 
not all at once — ^but if I had had I don’t think he 
would have absorbed it — not if I had signed it 
on the back for identification and had kept it in 
a money-belt around my waist and close to my 
skin. 

Those things, however, never trouble me. I don’t 
want to make a savings-bank of Joseph. It is his 
vivid imagination that appeals to me, or perhaps 
the picturesqueness with which he puts things. In 
this he is a veritable master. His material, too, is 
155 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


not only uncommonly rich, but practically inex- 
haustible. He knows everybody; has travelled with 
everybody; has always kept one ear and one eye 
open even when asleep, and has thus picked up an 
immense amount of information regarding people 
and events — mostly his own patrons — the telling of 
which has served to enliven many a quiet hour while 
he sat beside me as I painted. Why, once I remem- 
ber in Stamboul, when some Arabs had 

But I forget that I am following Joseph up- 
stairs, and that his mission is to see that I am com- 
fortably lodged at the Baur au Lac in Zurich. 

When we reached the second floor J oseph met the 
porter emerging into the corridor with my large 
luggage. He had mounted the back stairs. 

“Let me see Number IS, porter,” cried Joseph. 
“Ah, yes — it is just as I supposed. Is it in that hole 
you would put my Lord — where there is noise all 
the time.f* You see that window, my Lord.?” (By 
this time I had reached the two disputants and had 
entered the room. ) “You remember, your Highness, 
that enormous omnibus in which you have arrived 
just.? It is there that it sleeps.” And Joseph craned 
156 


A POINT OF HONOR 
his head out of the window and pointed in the direc- 
tion of the court-yard. “When it goes out in the 
morning at seven o’clock for the train it is like 
thunder. The Count Monflot had this room. You 
should have seen him when he was awoke at 
seven. He was like a crazy man. He pulled all 
the strings out of the bells, and when the waiter 
come he had the hat-box of Monsieur the Count 
at his head.” 

Dismissing the apartment with a contemptuous 
wave of his hand, Joseph, with the porter’s assist- 
ance, who had a pass-key, began a search of the 
other vacant rooms: half the hotel was vacant, I 
afterward learned ; all this telegram and book busi- 
ness was merely an attempt to bolster up the declin- 
ing days of a bad season. 

“Number 21 ? No — it is a little better, but it’s too 
near the behind stairs. It would be absurd to put 
his Lordship there. Number 24?” — here he looked 
into another room. “No, you can hear the grande 
baggage in the night going up and down. No, it 
will not do.” 

The manager, having disposed of the other mem- 

157 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
bers of the Emperor’s household, now approached 
with a servile smile fitted to all parts of his face. 
Joseph attacked him at once. 

“Is his Lordship a valet, Monsieur, that you 
should put him in such holes? Do you not know 
that he never wakes until ten, and has his coffee at 
eleven, and the omnibus, you know, sleeps there?” 
And he pointed outside. (Another Levantine lie: 
I am up at seven when the light is right.) 

Here the porter unlocked another room and stood 
by smiling. He knew the game was up now, and had 
reserved this one for the last. 

“Number — ^28! Ah, this is something like. Yes, 
my Lord, this will be quite right. La Contessa 
Moriarti had this room — ^yes, I remember.” (Joseph 
never serves any woman below the rank of con- 
tessa. ) 

So I moved into Number 28, handed Joseph the 
keys, and the porter deposited my luggage and 
withdrew, followed by the manager. Soon the large 
and small trunks were disembowelled, my sponge 
hung on a nail in the window, and the several toilet 
articles distributed in their proper places, Joseph 
158 


A POINT OF HONOR 
serving in the triple capacity of courier, valet, and 
chambermaid — the lame Englishman being out 
driving, and Joseph, therefore, having this hour to 
himself. This distribution, of course, was made in 
deference to my exalted rank and the ten-franc 
gold piece which he never fails to get despite my 
resolutions, and which he always seems to have 
earned despite my knowledge as to how the trick is 
performed. 

Suddenly a crash sounded through the hall as 
if somebody had dropped a tray of dishes. Then 
came another, and another. Either every waiter in 
the house was dropping trays, or an attack was 
being made on the pantry by a mob. 

Joseph, with a bound, threw back the door and 
we rushed out. 

Just opposite my room was a small salon with the 
door wide open. In its centre stood a man with an 
iron poker in his hand. He was busy smashing what 
was left of a large mirror, its pieces littering the 
floor. On the sofa lay another man twice the size of 
the first one, who was roaring with laughter. Down 
the corridor swooped a collection of guests, porters, 
159 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
and chambermaids in full cry, the manager at their 
head. 

“Two hundred and fifty francs, eh — for a look- 
ing-glass worth twenty francs?” I heard the man 
with the poker shout. “I blister with my gas-jet one 
little corner, and I must pay two hundred and fifty 
francs. I have ruined the mirror, have I, eh? And 
it must be thrown out and a new one put in to- 
morrow — eh?” Bang! bang! Here the poker came 
down on some small fragment still clinging to the 
frame. “Yes, it will come out [bang !] — all of it 
will come out.” 

The manager was now trying to make himself 
heard. Such words as “my mirror,” “outrage,” 
“Gendarme,” could be heard above the sound of 
the breaking glass and the shrieks of the man on 
the sofa, who seemed to be in a paroxysm of 
laughter. 

I looked on for a moment. Some infuriated 
lodger, angry, perhaps, at the overcharge in his 
bill, was venting his wrath on the furniture. It was 
not my mirror, and it was not my bill ; the manager 
was present with stafiP enough to throw both men 
160 


A POINT OF HONOR 
downstairs if he pleased and without my assistance, 
and so I turned and reentered my room. Two 
things fixed themselves in my mind: the alert fig- 
ure, trim as a fencer’s, of the man with the poker, 
and the laugh of the fat man sprawling on the 
lounge. 

Joseph followed me into my room and shut the 
door softly behind him. 

“Ah, I knew it was he. No other man is so crazy 
like that. He would break the head of the pro- 
prietaire just the same. That is an old swindle. 
That mirror has been cracked four — five — six times. 
The gas-jet is fixed so that you mtist crack it. All 
the mirrors like the one he burnt — it was only a 
little spot — go upstairs in the cheap rooms and 
new ones are brought in for such games. ’Most 
always they pay, but monsieur — it is not like him 
to pay. He has heard of the trick, perhaps — is it 
not delicious.?^” and Joseph’s face widened into a 
grin. 

“You know him, then.?” I broke in. 

“Know him.? — oh, for many years. He is the 
great Doctor Barsac. He smashes everything he 
161 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
doesn’t like. He smashed that old fat monsieur who 
made so much laugh. His name is Mariguy. He 
looks hke a cure, does he not.?^ But he is not a cure ; 
he is an advocate. Barsac is from Basle, but Mari- 
guy lives in Paris. Those two are never separated; 
they love each other like a man and a wife. There 
is a great medical convention here in Zurich, and 
Barsac has brought Mariguy with him to show him 
off. He put a new silver stomach in Mariguy last 
winter and is very proud of it. It is the great opera- 
tion of the year, they say.” 

“What happened to the fat man, Joseph — ^was 
it an accident.'^” 

“No — a duel. Barsac ran him through the belly 
with his sword.” 

“Permit me, my Lord — ” And Joseph stepped 
to the window. “Yes, there comes the lame English- 
man home from the drive. Excuse me — I will go 
and help him from his carriage.” And Joseph bowed 
himself out backward. 


16 a 


A POINT OF HONOR 


II 

Joseph’s departure left my mind in an un- 
settled state. I hadn’t the slightest interest in the 
great surgeon who had made the cure of the year, 
nor in the stout advocate with his nickel-plated di- 
gestive apparatus. Both of them might have broken 
every mirror in the hotel and have thrown the frag- 
ments out of the window, and the manager after 
them, without raising my pulse a beat. Neither did 
the medical convention nor the doctor’s exhibit 
cause me a moment’s thought. Such things were 
commonplace and of every-day occurrence. Only 
the dramatic in life appeals to so staid and gray an 
old painter as myself, and even Joseph’s pictur- 
esque imagination could not imbue either one of 
the incidents of the morning with that desirable 
quality. 

What really did appeal to me as I conjured up 
in my mind the picture of the fat man sprawled 
over the sofa-cushions roaring with laughter was 
163 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
the duel and the causes that led up to it. Why, if 
the man was his friend, had the doctor selected the 
hilarious advocate as an antagonist, and what could 
have induced the surgeon to pick out that partic- 
ular section of his friend’s surface in which to 
insert his sword. 

That same night, in the smoking-room of the 
hotel, Joseph caught sight of me as he passed the 
open door and moved forward to my table. He had 
changed his dress of the morning, discarding the 
inflammatory waistcoat, and was now upholstered in 
a full suit of black. He explained that there were 
some friends of his living in the village who were 
going to have some music. The Englishman was in 
bed and asleep, and now that he was sure that I 
was comfortable, he could give himself some little 
freedom, with his mind at rest. 

I motioned him to a seat. 

He laid his silk hat and one glove on an adjoin- 
ing table, spread his coat-tails, and deposited him- 
self on the extreme edge of a chair — a position 
which would enable him to regain his feet at a mo- 
ment’s notice should any of my friends chance to 
164 


A POINT OF HONOR 
join me. It is just such delicate recognition of my 
rank and lordly belongings that makes Joseph’s 
companionship ofttimes a pleasure. 

“You tell me, Joseph, that that crazy doctor 
stabbed the fat man in a duel.” 

“Not stabbed, my Lord! That is not the nice 
word. It was done so — so — so.” And Joseph’s wrist, 
holding an imaginary sword, performed the grand 
thrust in the air. “He is a master with the rapier. 
When he was at the Sorbonne he had five duels and 
never once a scratch. His honor was most para- 
mount. He would fight with anybody, and for the 
smallest thing — if one man had a longer cane, or 
wore a higher hat, or took cognac in his coffee. Not 
for the grisette or for the cards in the face; not 
so big a thing as that ; quite a small thing that no- 
body would remember a moment. And with his 
friends always — ^never with the man he did not 
before know.” 

“And was the fat man his friend 

“His friend! Mon Dieu! they were like the 
brothers. One — two — ^five year, I think — all the 
whole time of the instruction. I was not there, of 
165 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
course, but a friend of mine tell me — a most truth- 
ful man, my friend.” 

“What was the row about? Cognac in his 
coffee?” 

“I do not know — ^perhaps somethings. Yes, I 
do remember now. It was the cutting of the hair. 
Barsac like it short and Mariguy like it long. Bar- 
sac tried to cut the hair from Mariguy ’s head when 
he was asleep, and then it began. It was in that 
little wood at the bridge at Suresne that they went 
to fight. You know you turn to the right and there 
is a little place — all small trees — there it was. 

“When they all got ready, there quickly arrive a 
carriage all dust, and the horse in a sweat, and out 
jumps an old lady — it was Mariguy’s mother. 
Somebody had told her — not Mariguy, of course, 
but some student. ‘Stop!’ she cried; ‘you do not my 
son kill. You, Barsac, you do nothing but fight!’ 
Then they all talk, and Mariguy say to Barsac, ‘It 
cannot be ; my mother, as you see, is old. There is 
no one but me. If I am wounded, she will be in the 
bed with fright. If I am killed, she will be dead. It 
is my mother, you see, that you fight, not me.’ 

166 


A POINT OF HONOR 

^‘Barsac take off his hat and bow to madame.” 
( J oseph had now reached for his own and was 
illustrating the incident with an appropriate gest- 
ure. ) ‘‘ ‘Madame Mariguy said Barsac, ‘I make 
ten thousand pardons. I respect the devotion of the 
mother,’ and he went back to Paris, and Mariguy 
got into the carriage and go away with the 
mother.” 

“But, Joseph, of course that was not the last 
of it.?” 

“Yes, my Lord, until one year ago.” 

“Why, did they have another quarrel, Joseph?” 

“No, not another — never but that one. They 
were for a long time what you call friends of the 
bosom. Every day after that they see each other, 
and every night they dine at the Louis d’Or below 
the Luxembourg. Then pretty soon the doctor, he 
have to take his degree and come back to Basle to 
live, and Monsieur Mariguy also have take his 
degree and become a great advocate in Paris. 
Every week come a letter from Barsac to Mariguy, 
and one from Mariguy to Barsac.” 

Joseph stopped in his narrative at this point, 

167 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
noticing perhaps some shade of incredulity across 
my countenance, and said parenthetically: “I am 
quite surprised, my Lord, that you have not this 
heard before. It was quite the talk of Paris at the 
time. No.^^ Well, then, I will tell you everything as 
it did happen, for I do assure you that it is most 
exciting. 

“All this time — it was quite ten years, perhaps 
fifteen — not one word does Monsieur Barsac say to 
Monsieur Mariguy about the insult of the long 
hair. All the time, too, they are together. For the 
summer they go to a little village in the Swiss 
mountains, and for the winter they go to Nice, and 
’most every night they play a little at the tables. 
It was there I met them. 

“One morning at Basle the doctor was at his 
table eating the breakfast when the newspaper is 
put on the side. He read a little and sip his coffee, 
and then he read a little more — all this, my Lord, 
was in the papers at the time — I am quite aston- 
ished that you have not seen it — and then the doctor 
make a loud cry, and throw the paper down, run 
168 


A POINT OF HONOR 
upstairs, pack his bag, jump into a fiacre and go 
like mad to the station. The next morning he is in 
Paris, and at the house of his friend Mariguy. In 
three days they are at Suresne again — not in the 
little wood, but in the garden of Monsieur Roche- 
fort, who was his second. It was against the law to 
go into the little wood to fight, so they took the 
nearest place to their old meeting — a small senti- 
ment, you see, my Lord, which Monsieur the Doc- 
tor always enjoys. 

“They^ toss up for the sun, and Monsieur Barsac 
he gets the shade. At the first pass, no one is hurt. 
At the second. Monsieur Barsac has a little scratch 
on his wrist, but no blood. The seconds make 
inspection most careful. They regret that the 
encounter must go on, but the honor is not yet 
satisfied. At the third. Monsieur Mariguy made a 
misstep, and Monsieur Barsac’s sword go into Mon- 
sieur Mariguy’s shirt and come out at Monsieur 
Mariguy’s back. 

“You can imagine what then take place. Doctor 
Barsac cry in a loud voice that his honor is satisfied, 
169 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
and the next moment he is on his knees beside his 
friend. Monsieur Mariguy is at once put in the bed, 
and for one — two — three months he is dead one day 
and breathe a little the next. Barsac never leave the 
house of his friend Monsieur Rochefort one moment 
— not one day does he go back to Basle. Every 
night he is by the bed of Monsieur Mariguy. Then 
comes the critical moment. Monsieur Mariguy must 
have a new stomach ; the old one is like a stocking 
with a hole in the toe. Then comes the great tri- 
umph of Monsieur le Docteur. All Paris come out 
to see. To make a stomach of silver is to make one 
the fool, they say. The old doctors shake their 
heads, but Barsac he only laugh. In one more 
month Monsieur Mariguy is on his feet, and every 
day walks a little in the Bois near the house of 
Monsieur Rochefort. In one more month he run, 
and eat himself full like a boy. 

“He is now no longer the great advocate. He 
is the example of Monsieur Barsac. That is why he 
is here at the medical convention. They arrived only 
yesterday and leave to-night. If you turn a little, 
my Lord, you can see into the other room. There 
170 


A POINT OF HONOR 
they sit smoking. — Ah ! do you hear? That is Mon- 
sieur Mariguy’s laugh. Oh, they enjoy themselves! 
They have drank two bottles of Johannisberger 
already — ^twenty-five francs each, if you please, my 
Lord. The head waiter showed me the bottles. But 
what does Barsac care? H© cut everything out of 
the insides of the Prince Morin one day last month, 
and had for a fee fifty thousand francs and the 
order of St. John.” 

I bent my head in the direction of Joseph’s index 
finger and easily recognized the two men at the 
table. The smaller man, Barsac, was even more trim 
and alert-looking than when I caught a glimpse of 
him in the bedroom. As he sat and talked to Mari- 
guy he looked more like an officer in the French 
army than a doctor. His hair was short, his mus- 
tache pointed, and his beard closely trimmed. He 
t had two square shoulders and a slim waist, and 
talked with his hands as if they were part of his 
mental equipment. The other man, Mariguy, the 
‘‘example,” was just a fat, jolly, good-natured 
Frenchman, who to all appearance loved a bottle of 
wine better than he did a brief. 

171 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

Joseph was about to begin again when I stopped 
him with this inquiry : 

“There is one thing in your story, Joseph, that 
I don’t quite get: you say they were students 
together?” 

“Yes, my Lord.” 

“That the first duel — the one that the mother 
stopped — ^was fifteen years ago?” 

“Quite true, my Lord.” 

“And that this last duel was fought a year ago, 
and that all that time they were together whenever 
they could be, and devoted friends?” 

“Every word true, my Lord.” 

“Well, then, why didn’t they fight before?” 

Joseph looked at me with a curious expression 
on his face — one rather of disappointment, as if 
I had utterly failed to grasp his meaning. 

“Fight before! It would have been impossible, 
my Lord. Barsac’s honor was at the stake.” 

“And he must wait fifteen years,” I asked with 
some impatience, “to vindicate it?” 

“Certainly, my Lord — or twice that time if it 
was necessary. It was only when he read in the 
172 


A POINT OF HONOR 
paper at the table of his breakfast that morning in 
Basle that he knew.” 

“What difference did that make?” 

“Every difference, my Lord ; Madame Mariguy, 
the mother, was only the day before dead.” 


173 


SIMPLE FOLK 


,1 


% 


/ 




J 



SIMPLE POLE 


A. long reach of coast country, white and smooth, 
broken by undulating fences smothered in snow- 
drifts, only their stakes and bush-tops showing; 
farther away, horizontal markings of black pines ; 
still farther away, a line of ragged dunes bearded 
with yellow grass bordering a beach flecked with 
scurries of foam — mouthings of a surf twisting as 
if in pain; beyond this a wide sea, greenish gray, 
gray and gray-blue, slashed here and there with 
white-caps pricked by wind rapiers; beyond this 
again, out into space, a leaden sky flat as paint 
and as monotonous. 

Nearer by, so close that I could see their move- 
ments from the car window, spatterings of crows, 
and higher up circling specks of gulls glinting or 
darkening as their breasts or backs caught the 
light. These crows and gulls were the only things 
alive in the wintry waste. 

No, one thing more — two, in fact: as I came 
nearer the depot, a horse tethered to the section 

177 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
of the undulating fence, a rough-coated, wind- 
blown, shackly beast; the kind the great Schreyer 
always painted shivering with cold outside a stable 
door (and in the snow, too), and a man: Please 
remember, A MAN ! And please continue to remem- 
ber it to the end of this story. 

Thirty-one years in the service he — this keeper 
of the Naukashon Life-Saving Station — ^twenty- 
five at this same post. Six feet and an inch, tough 
as a sapling and as straight; long-armed, long- 
legged, broad-shouldered and big-boned; face 
brown and tanned as skirt leather; eye like a 
hawk’s; mouth but a healed scar, so firm is it; 
low-voiced, simple-minded and genuine. 

If you ask him what he has done in all these 
thirty-one years of service he will tell you: 

“Oh, I kind o’ forget; the Superintendent gets 
reports. You see, some months we’re not busy, and 
then ag’in we ain’t had no wrecks for considerable 
time.” 

If you should happen to look in his locker, away 
back out of sight, you would perhaps find a small 
paper box, and in it a gold medal — the highest 
178 


SIMPLE FOLK 

his government can give him — inscribed with his 
name and a record of some particular act of hero- 
ism. When he is confronted with the tell-tale evi- 
dence, he will say : 

“Oh, yes — they did give me that! I’m keepin’ 
it for my grandson.” 

If you, failing to corkscrew any of the details 
out of him, should examine the Department’s re- 
ports, you will find out all he “forgets” — among 
them the fact that in his thirty-one years of ser- 
vice he and the crew under him have saved the lives 
of one hundred and thirty-one men and women out 
of a possible one hundred and thirty-two. He ex- 
plains the loss of this unlucky man by saying 
apologetically that “the fellow got dizzy somehow 
and locked himself in the cabin, and we didn’t know 
he was there until she broke up and he got washed 
ashore.” 

This was the man who, when I arrived at the 
railroad station, held out a hand in hearty welcome, 
his own closing over mine with the grip of a cant- 
hook. 

“Well, by Jiminy ! Superintendent said you was 

179 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
cornin’, but I kind o’ thought you wouldn’t ’til the 
weather cleared. Gimme yer bag — Yes, the boys 
are all well and will be glad to see ye. Colder than 
blue blazes, ain’t it.^ Snow ain’t over yet. Well, 
well, kind o’ natural to see ye !” 

The bag was passed up; the Captain caught 
the reins in his crab-like fingers, and the bunch of 
wind-blowTi fur, gathering its stiffened legs to- 
gether, wheeled sharply to the left and started in 
to make pencil-markings in double lines over the 
white snow seaward toward the Naukashon Life- 
Saving Station. 

The perspective shortened : first the smooth, 
unbroken stretch; then the belt of pines; then a 
flat marsh diked by dunes ; then a cluster of black 
dots, big and little — the big one being the Station 
house, and the smaller ones its outbuildings and 
fishermen’s shanties; and then the hard, straight 
line of the pitiless sea. 

I knew the “boys.” I had known, some of them 
for years : ever since I picked up one of their sta- 
tions — its site endangered by the scour of the tide 
— ran it on skids a mile over the sand to the land 
180 











♦ > 


Jt 


>r 





Over the white snow seaward. 












a 


SIMPLE FOLK 

side of the inlet without moving the crew or their 
comforts (even their wet socks were left drying 
on a string by the kitchen stove) ; shoved it aboard 
two scows timbered together, started out to sea 
under the guidance of a light-draught tug in search 
of its new location three miles away, and then, with 
the assistance of a suddenly developed north-east 
gale, backed up by my own colossal engineering 
skill, dropped the whole concern — skids, house, 
kitchen stove, socks and all — into the sea. When 
the surf dogs were through with its carcass the 
beach was strewn with its bones picked clean by 
their teeth. Only the weathercock, which had 
decorated its cupola, was left. This had floated off 
and was found perched on top of a sand-dune, 
whizzing away on its ornamental cap as merry as 
a jig-dancer. It was still whirling away, this time 
on the top of the cupola at Naukashon. I could 
see it plainly as I drove up, its arrow due east, 
looking for trouble as usual. 

Hence my friendship for Captain Shortrode and 
his trusty surfmen. Hence, too, my welcome when 
I pushed in the door of the sitting-room and caught 
181 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
the smell of the cooking: Dave Austin’s clam 
chowder — I could pick it out anywhere, even among 
the perfumes of a Stamboul kitchen; and hence, 
too, the hearty hand-grasp from the big, brawny 
men around the stove. 

“Well ! Kind o’ summer weather you picked out ! 
Here, take this chair — Gimme yer coat. — Git them 
legs o’ yourn in, Johnny. He’s a new man — John 
Partridge ; guess you ain’t met him afore. Where’s 
Captain Shortrode gone ? Oh, yes ! — puttin’ up old 
Moth-eaten. Ain’t nothin’ he thinks as much of as 
that old horse. Oughter pack her in camphor. Well, 
how’s things in New York? — Nelse, put on anoth- 
er shovel of coal — Yes, colder’n Christmas! . . . 
Nothin’ but nor’east wind since the moon changed. 
. . . Chowder! — ^Yes, yer dead right; Dave’s 

cookin’ this week, and he said this momin’ he’d 
have a mess for ye.” 

A stamping of feet outside and two bifurcated 
walruses (four hours out on patrol) pushed in 
the door. Muffled in oilskins these, rubber-booted 
to their hips, the snow-line marking their waists 
where they had plunged through the drifts; their 
182 


SIMPLE FOLK 

sou’-westers tied under their chins, shading beards 
white with frost and faces raw with the slash of 
the beach wind. 

More hand-shakes now; and a stripping of wet 
outer-alls; a wash-up and a hair-smooth; a shout 
of “Dinner!” from the capacious lungs of David 
the cook; a silent, reverential grace with every 
head bowed (these are the things that surprise you 
until you know these men), and with one accord 
an attack is made upon Dave’s chowder and his 
corn-bread and his fried ham and his — Well, the 
air was keen and bracing, and the salt of the sea 
a permeating tonic, and the smell ! — Ah, David ! I 
wish you’d give up your job and live with me, and 
bring your saucepan and your griddle and your 
broiler and — ^my appetite ! 

The next night the Captain was seated at the 
table working over his monthly report, the kerosene 
lamp lighting up his bronzed face and falling upon 
his open book. There is nothing a keeper hates 
to do so much as making out monthly reports ; his 
hard, homy hand is shaped to grasp an oar, not a 
183 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
pen. Four other men were asleep upstairs in their 
bunks, waiting their turns to be called for patrol. 
Two were breasting a north-east gale howling along 
the coast, their Coston signals tightly buttoned 
under their oilskins. 

Tom Van Brunt and I — Tom knew all about the 
little kitchen stove and the socks — ^he had forgiven 
me my share in their loss — were tilted back against 
the wall in our chairs. The slop and rattle of Dave’s 
dishes came in through the open door leading to 
the kitchen. Outside could be heard the roar and 
hammer of the surf and the shriek of the baffled 
wind trying to burglarize the house by way of the 
eaves and the shutters. 

The talk had drifted to the daily life at the 
Station; the dreariness of waiting for something 
to come ashore (in a disappointed tone from Tom, 
as if he and his fellow surf men had not had their 
share of wrecks this winter) ; of the luck of Number 
16j in charge of Captain Elleck and his crew, who 
had got seven men and a woman out of an English 
bark last week without wetting the soles of their 
feet. 


184 


SIMPLE FOLK 

‘‘Fust shot went for’d of her chain plates,” 
Tom explained, “and then they made fast and come 
off in the breeches-buoy. Warn’t an hour after she 
struck ’fore they had the hull of ’em up to the Sta- 
tion and supper ready. Heavy sea runnin’ too.” 

Tom then shifted his pipe and careened his head 
my way, and with a tone in his voice that left a 
ring behind it which vibrated in me for days, and 
does now, said: 

“I’ve been here for a good many years, and I 
guess I’ll stay here long as the Guv’ment’ll let me. 
Some people think we’ve got a soft snap, and some 
people think we ain’t. ’Tis kind o’ lonely, some- 
times — then somethin’ comes along and we even up ; 
but it ain’t that that hurts me really — it’s bein’ so 
much away from home.” 

Tom paused, rapped the bowl of his pipe on his 
heel to clear it, twisted his body so that he could 
lay the precious comfort on the window-sill behind 
him safe out of harm’s way, and continued: 

“Yes, bein’ so much away from home. I’ve been 
a surf man, you know, goin’ on thirteen years, and 
out o’ that time I ain’t been home but two year and 
185 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
a half runnin’ the days solid, which they ain’t. I 
live up in Naukashon village, and you know how 
close that is. Cap’n could ’a’ showed you my house 
as you druv ’long through — it’s just across the way 
from his’n.” 

I looked at Tom in surprise. I knew that the men 
did not go home but once in two weeks, and then 
only for a day, but I had not summed up the va- 
cation as a whole. Tom shifted his tilted leg, set- 
tled himself firmer in his chair, and went on : 

“I ain’t askin’ no favors, and I don’t expect to 
git none. We got to watch things down here, and 
we dasn’t be away when the weather’s rough, and 
there ain’t no other kind ’long this coast ; but now 
and then somethin’ hits ye and hurts ye, and ye 
don’t forgit it. I got a little baby at home — seven 
weeks old now — hearty little feller — goin’ to call 
him after the Cap’n,” and he nodded toward the 
man scratching away with his pen. “I ain’t had a 
look at that baby but three times since he was bom, 
and last Sunday it come my turn and I went up 
to see the wife and him. My brother Bill lives with 
me. He lost his wife two year ago, and the baby 
186 


SIMPLE FOLK 

she left didn’t live more’n a week after she died, 
and so Bill, not havin’ no children of his own, 
takes to mine — I got three.” 

Again Tom stopped, this time for a percept- 
ible moment. I noticed a little quiver in his voice 
now. 

“Well, when I got home it was ’bout one o’clock 
in the day. I been on patrol that momin’ — it was 
snowin’ and thick. Wife had the baby up to the 
winder waitin’ for me, and they all come out — 
Bill and my wife and my little Susie, she’s five 
year old — and then we aU went in and sat down, 
and I took the baby in my arms, and it looked at 
me kind o’ skeered-like and cried; and Bill held 
out his hands and took the baby, and he stopped 
cryin’ and laid kind o’ contented in his arms, and 
my little Susie said, ‘Pop, I guess baby thinks 
Uncle Bill’s his father.’ . . . I — tell — you — 

that — hurt!"’ 

As the last words dropped from Tom’s lips two 
of the surf men — Jerry Potter and Robert Saul, 
who had been breasting the north-east gale — pushed 
open the door of the sitting-room and peered in, 
187 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


looking like two of Nansen’s men just off an ice- 
floe. Their legs were clear of snow this time, the 
two having brushed each other off with a broom on 
the porch outside. Jerry had been exchanging 
brass checks with the patrol of No. 14, three miles 
down the beach, and Saul had been setting his clock 
by a key, locked in an iron box bolted to a post 
two miles and a half away and within sight of the 
inlet. Tramping the beach beside a roaring surf 
in a north-east gale blowing fifty miles an hour, 
and in the teeth of a snow-storm each flake cutting 
like grit from a whirhng grindstone, was to these 
men what the round of a city park is to a summer 
policeman. 

Jerry peeled off his waterproofs from head, body, 
and legs ; raked a pair of felt slippers from under 
a chair; stuck his stocking-feet into their comfort- 
ing depths ; tore a sliver of paper from the end of 
a worn-out journal, twisted it into a wisp, worked 
the door of the cast-iron stove loose with his 
marlin-spike of a finger, held the wisp to the blaze, 
lighted his pipe carefully and methodically ; tilted 
a chair back, and settling his great frame comfort- 
188 


SIMPLE FOLK 

ably between its arms, started in to smoke. Saul 
duplicated his movements to the minutest detail, 
with the single omission of those connected with 
the pipe. Saul did not smoke. 

Up to this time not a word had been spoken 
by anybody since the two men entered. Men who 
live together so closely dispense with “How d’yes” 
and “Good-bys.” I was not enough of a stranger 
to have the rule modified on my account after the 
first salutations. 

Captain Shortrode looked up from his report 
and broke the silence. 

“That sluice-way cuttin’ in any, Jerry 

Jerry nodded his head and replied between puffs 
of smoke: 

“ ’Bout fifty feet, I guess.” 

The grizzled Captain took off his eye-glasses — 
he only used them in making up his report — laid 
them carefully beside his sheet of paper, stretched 
his long legs, lifting his body to the perpendicular, 
dragged a chair to my side of the room, and said 
with a dry chuckle: 

“I’ve got to laugh every time I think of that 

189 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
sluice-way. Last month — Wam’t it last month, 
Jerry.?” Jerry nodded, and sent a curl of smoke 
through his ragged mustache, accompanied by the 
remark, “Yes — last month.” 

The Captain continued : 

“Last month, I say, we were havin’ some al- 
mighty high tides, and when they git to cuttin’ 
round that sluice-way it makes it bad for our 
beach-cart, ’specially when we’ve got to keep 
abreast of a wreck that ain’t grounded so we can 
git a line to her; so I went down after supper to 
see how the sluice-way was cornin’ on. It was foggy, 
and a heavy sea runnin’ — the surf showin’ white, 
but everythin’ else black as pitch. Fust thing I 
knew I beared somethin’ like the rattle of an oar- 
lock, or a tally -block, and then a cheer come just 
outside the breakers. I run down to the swash and 
listened, and then I seen her cornin’ bow on, big as 
a house; four men in her holdin’ on to the gun- 
nels, hollerin’ for all they was worth. I got to her 
just as the surf struck her and rolled her over bot- 
tom-side up.” 

“Were you alone.?” I interrupted. 

190 


SIMPLE FOLK 

“Had to be. The men were up and down the 
beach and the others was asleep in their bunks. 
Well, when I had ’em all together I run ’em up 
on the beach and in here to the Station, and when 
the light showed ’em up — Well, I tell ye, one of 
’em — a nigger cook — was a sight ! ’Bout seven feet 
high, and thick round as a flag-pole, and blacker’ n 
that stove, and skeered so his teeth was a-chatterin’. 
They’d left their oyster schooner a-poundin’ out on 
the bar and had tried to come ashore in their boat. 
Well, we got to work on ’em and got some dry 
clo’es on ’em, and ” 

“Were you wet, too.?” I again interrupted. 

“Wet! Soppin’i I’d been under the boat feelin’ 
’round for ’em. Well, the King’s Daughters had 
sent some clo’es down, and we looked over what we 
had, and I got a pair of high-up pants, and Jerry, 
who wears Number 12 — Don’t you, Jerry.?” (Jerry 
nodded and pufPed on) — “had an old pair of shoes, 
and we found a jacket, another high-up thing big 
’nough to fit a boy, that come up to his shoulder- 
blades, and he put ’em on and then he set ’round 
here for a spell dryin’ out, with his long black legs 

191 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
stickin’ from out of his pants like handle-bars, and 
his hands, big as hams, pokin’ out o’ the sleeves o’ 
his jacket. We got laughin’ so we had to go out by 
ourselves in the kitchen and have it out; didn’t 
want to hurt his feelin’s, you know.” 

The Captain leaned back in his chair, laughed 
quietly to himself at the picture brought back to 
his mind, and continued, the men listening quietly, 
the smoke of their pipes drifting over the room. 

“Next mornin’ we got the four of ’em all ready 
to start off to the depot on their way back to Phila- 
delphy — ^there wam’t no use o’ their stayin’, their 
schooner was all up and down the beach, and there 
was oysters ’nough ’long the shore to last every- 
body a month. Well, when the feller got his rig 
on he looked himself all over, and then he said he 
would like to have a hat. ’Bout a week before Tom 
here [Tom nodded now, and smiled] had picked 
up on the beach one o’ these high gray stovepipe 
hats with a black band on it, blowed overboard 
from some o’ them yachts, maybe. Tom had it up 
on the mantel there dry in’, and he said he didn’t 
care, and I give it to the nigger and off he started, 
192 


SIMPLE FOLK 

and we all went out on the back porch to see him 
move. Well, sir, when he went up ’long the dunes 
out here toward the village, steppin’ like a crane 
in them high-up pants and jacket and them Num- 
ber 12s of Jerry’s and that hat of Tom’s ’bout 
three sizes too small for him, I tell ye he was a 
show!"’ 

Jerry and Saul chuckled, and Tom broke into a 
laugh — the first smile I had seen on Tom’s face 
since he had finished telling me about the little 
baby at home. 

I laughed too — outwardly to the men and in- 
wardly to myself with a peculiar tightening of the 
throat, followed by a glow that radiated heat as it 
widened. My mind was not on the grotesque negro 
cook in the assorted clothes. All I saw was a man 
fighting the surf, groping around in the blackness 
of the night for four water-soaked, terrified men 
until he got them, as he said, “all together.” That 
part of it had never appealed to the Captain, and 
never will. Pulling drowning men, single-handed, 
from a boiling surf, was about as easy as puUing 
gudgeons out of a babbling brook. 

193 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


Saul now piped up : 

“Oughter git the Cap’n to tell ye how he got 
that lady ashore last winter from off that Jamaica 
brig.” 

At the sound of Saul’s voice Captain Shortrode 
rose quickly from his chair, picked up his report 
and spectacles, and with a deprecating wave of his 
hand, as if the story would have to come from some 
other lips than his own, left the room — to “get an 
envelope,” he said. 

“He won’t come back for a spell,” laughed Jerry. 
“The old man don’t hke that yam.” “Old man” 
was a title of authority, and had nothing to do 
with the Captain’s fifty years. 

I made no comment — not yet. My ears were 
open, of course, but I was not holding the tiller 
of conversation and preferred that someone else 
should steer. 

Again Saul piped up, this time to me, reading 
my curiosity in my eyes : 

“Well, there warn’t nothin’ much to it, ’cept the 
way the Cap’n got her ashore,” and again Saul 
chuckled quietly, this time as if to himself. “The 
194 


SIMPLE FOLK 

beach was full o’ shipyard rats and loafers, and 
when they beared there was a lady cornin’ ashore 
in the breeches-buoy, more of ’em kept cornin’ in on 
the run. We’d fired the shot-line and had the anchor 
buried and the hawser fast to the brig’s mast and 
the buoy rigged, and we were just goin’ to haul 
in when Cap’n looked ’round on the crowd, and he 
see right away what they’d come for and what they 
was ’spectin’ to' see. Then he ordered the buoy 
hauled back and he got into the breeches himself, 
and we soused him through the surf and off he went 
to the brig. He showed her how to tuck her skirts 
in, and how to squat down in the breeches ’stead 
o’ stickin’ her feet through, and then she got 
skeered and said she couldn’t and hollered, and so 
he got in with her and got his arms ’round her and 
landed her, both of ’em pretty wet.” Saul stopped 
and leaned forward in his chair. I was evidently 
expected to say something. 

“Well, that was just like the Captain,” I said, 
mildly, “but where does the joke come in?” 

“Well, there warn’t no joke, really,” remarked 
Saul with a wink around the room, “ ’cept when we 
195 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
untangled ’em. She was ’bout seventy years old, 
and black as tar. That’s all!” 

It seemed to be my turn now — “the laugh” being 
on me. Captain Shortrode was evidently of the 
same opinion, for, on reentering the room, he threw 
the envelope on the table, and settling himself again 
in his chair looked my way, as if expecting the 
next break in the conversation to be made by me. 
Two surf men, who had been asleep upstairs, now 
joined the group, the laughter over Saul’s story 
of the “lady” having awakened them half an hour 
ahead of their time. They came in rubbing their 
eyes, their tarpaulins and hip-boots over their arms. 
Jerry, Tom, and Saul still remained tilted back in 
their chairs. They should have been in bed rest- 
ing for their next patrol (they went out again 
at four A.M.), but preferred to sit up in my 
honor. 

Dozens of stories flashed into my mind — the kind 
I would tell at a club dinner, or with the coffee 
and cigarettes — and were as instantly dropped. 
Such open-air, breezy giants, full of muscle and 
ozone, would find no interest in the adventures of 

,196 


SIMPLE FOLK 

any of my characters ; the cheap wit of the cafes, 
the homely humor of the farm, the chatter of the 
opera-box, or whisperings behind the palms of 
the conservatory — nothing of this could possibly 
interest these men. I would have been ashamed to 
offer it. Tom’s simple, straightforward story of 
his baby and his brother Bill had made it im- 
possible for me to attempt to match it with any 
cheap pathos of my own; just as the graphic treat- 
ment of the fitting out of the negro cook by the 
Captain, and of the rescue of the “lady” by Saul, 
had ended all hopes of my entertaining the men 
around me with any worm-eaten, hollow-shelled 
chestnuts of my own. What was wanted was some 
big, simple, genuine yarn: strong meat for strong 
men, not milk for babes: something they would 
know all about and believe in and were part of. 
The storming of a fort; the flagging of a train 
within three feet of an abyss ; the rescue of a child 
along a burning ledge five stories above the side- 
walk: all these themes bubbled up and sank again 
in my mind. Some of them I only knew parts of ; 
some had but little point; all of them were hazy 

197 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
in my mind. I remembered, with regret, that I could 
only repeat the first verse of the ‘‘Charge of the 
Light Brigade,” and but two lines of “Horatius,” 
correctly. 

Suddenly a great light broke in upon me. What 
they wanted was something about their own life: 
some account of the deeds of other life-savers up 
and down the coast, graphically put with proper 
dramatic effect, beginning slowly and culminating 
in the third act with a blaze of heroism. These big, 
brawny heroes about me would then get a clearer 
idea of the estimation in which they were held by 
their countrymen ; a clearer idea, too, of true hero- 
ism — of the genuine article, examples of which 
were almost nightly shown in their own lives. This 
would encourage them to still greater efforts, and 
the world thereby be the better for my telling. 

That gallant rescue of the man off Quogue was 
just the thing! 

The papers of the week before had been full of 
the bravery of these brother surfmen on the Long 
Island coast. This, and some additional informa- 
tion given me by a reporter who visited the scene 
198 


SIMPLE FOLK 

of the disaster after the rescue, could not fail to 
make an impression, I thought. Yes, the rescue was 
the very thing. 

“Oh! men,” I began, “did you hear about that 
four-master that came ashore off Shinnecock last 
week ?” and I looked around into their faces. 

“No,” remarked Jerry, pulhng his pipe from his 
mouth. “What about it.^^” 

“Why, yes, ye did,” grunted Tom; “Number 
17 got two of ’em.” 

“Yes, and the others were drowned,” interrupted 
Saul. 

“Thick, wam’t it.^”’ suggested one of the sleepy 
surfmen, thrusting his wharf-post of a leg into one 
section of his hip-boots preparatory to patrolling 
the beach. 

“Yes,” I continued, “dense fog ; couldn’t see five 
feet from the shore. She grounded about a mile 
west of the Station, and all the men had to locate 
her position by was the cries of the crew. They 
couldn’t use the boat, the sea was running so heavy, 
and thej?^ couldn’t get a line over her because they 
couldn’t see her. They stood by, however, all night, 

199 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
and at daylight she broke in two. All that day 
the men of two stations worked to get off to them, 
and every time they were beaten back by the sea 
and wreckage. Then the fog cleared a little and 
two of the crew of the schooner were seen cling- 
ing to a piece of timber and some floating freight. 
Shot after shot was fired at them, and by a lucky 
hit one fell across them, and they made fast and 
were hauled toward the shore.” 

At this moment the surfman who had been strug- 
gling with his hip-boots caught my eye, nodded, 
and silently left the room, fully equipped for his 
patrol. I went on : 

“When the wreckage, with the two men clinging 
to it, got within a hundred yards of the surf, the 
inshore floatage struck them, and smash they went 
into the thick of it. One of the shipwrecked men 
grabbed the line and tried to come ashore, the other 
poor fellow held to the wreckage. Twice the sea 
broke his hold, and still he held on.” 

The other surfman now, without even a nod, dis- 
appeared into the night, slamming the outer door 
behind him, the cold air finding its way into our 
200 


SIMPLE FOLK 

warm retreat. I ignored the slight discourtesy and 
proceeded : 

“Now, boys, comes the part of the story I think 
will interest you.” As I said this I swept my glance 
around the room. Jerry was yawning behind his 
hand and Tom was shaking the ashes from his 
pipe. 

“On the beach” (my voice rose now) “stood Bill 
Halsey, one of the Quogue crew. He knew that the 
sailor in his weakened condition could not hold on 
through the inshore wreckage; and sure enough, 
while he was looking, a roller came along and tore 
the man from his hold. In went Bill straight at the 
combers, fighting his way. There was not one 
chance in a hundred that he could live through 
it, but he got the man and held on, and the crew 
rushed in and hauled them clear of the smother, 
both of them half-dead. Bill’s arms still locked 
around the sailor. Bill came to soonest, and the first 
words he said were, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m all right : 
take care of the sailor !’ ” 

I looked around again; Captain Shortrode was 
examining the stubs of his horny fingers with as 
201 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
much care as if they would require amputation at 
no distant day ; Jerry and Saul had their gaze on 
the floor. Tom was still tilted back, his eyes tight 
shut. I braced up and continued: 

“All this, of course, men, you no doubt heard 
about, but what the reporter told me may be new 
to you. That night the ‘Shipping News’ got Bill 
on the ’phone and asked him if he was William 
Halsey.” 

“ ‘Yes.’ ” 

“ ‘Are you the man who pulled the sailor out of 
the wreckage this morning at daybreak ?’ ” 

“ ‘Yes.’ ” 

“ ‘Well, we’d like you to write some little ac- 
count of ’ ” 

“ ‘Well, I ain’t got no time.’ ” 

“ ‘If we send a reporter down, will you talk to 
him and ’ ” 

“ ‘No, for there ain’t nothin’ to tell ^ ” 

“ ‘You’re Halsey, aren’t you.^’ ” 

“ ‘Yes.’ ” 

“ ‘Well, we should like to get some of the de- 
tails ; it was a very heroic rescue, and ’ ” 

SOS 


SIMPLE FOLK 


“ ‘Well, there ain’t no details and there ain’t no 
heroics. I git paid for what I do, and I done it,’ ” 
and he rang off the ’phone. 

A dead silence followed — one of those uncom- 
fortable silences that often follows a society break 
precipitating the well-known unpleasant quarter of 
an hour. This silence lasted only a minute. Then 
Captain Shortrode remarked calmly and coldly, 
and, I thought, with a tired feeling in his voice : 

“Well, what else could he have said?” 

The fur-coated beast was taken out of camphor, 
hooked up to the buggy, and the Captain and I 
ploughed our way back through the snow to the 
depot,' the men standing in the door-way waving 
their hands Good-by. 

The next day I wrote this to the Superintend- 
ent at headquarters: 

“These men fear nothing but God!” 


203 


r 



V 


I 

( 




K 



OLD SUNSHINE’ 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 


It was when pulling in his milk one morning 
that Dalny first made the acquaintance of “Old 
Sunshine.” The cans had become mixed, Dalny’s 
pint having been laid at the old man’s door and the 
old man’s gill at Dalny’s, and the rectifying of 
the mistake — “Old Sunshine” did the rectifying 
— laid the basis of the acquaintance. 

Everybody, of course, in the Studio Building 
knew the old man and his old sister by sight, but 
only one or two well enough to speak to him ; none 
of them to speak to the poor, faded woman, who 
would climb the stairs so many times a day, always 
stopping for her breath at the landing, and always 
with some little package — a pinch of tea, or a loaf 
of bread, or fragment of chop — which she hid 
under her apron if she heard anyone’s steps. She 
was younger than her brother by a few years, but 
207 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
there was no mistaking their relationship; their 
noses were exactly ahke — long, semi-transparent 
noses, protruding between two wistful, china-blue 
eyes peering from under eyebrows shaded by soft 
gray hair. 

The rooms to which the sister climbed, and 
where the brother worked, were at the top of the 
building, away up under the corridor skyhght, 
the iron ladder to its trap being bolted to the wall 
outside their very door. It was sunnier up there, 
the brother said. One of the rooms he used for his 
studio, sleeping on a cot behind a screen ; the other 
was occupied by his sister. What little housekeep- 
ing was necessary went on behind this door. Out- 
side, on its upper panel, was tacked a card bearing 
his name: 

Adolphe Woolf sen. 

When he had moved in, some years before — 
long before Dalny arrived in the building — the 
agent had copied the inscription in his book from 
this very card, and had thereafter nailed it to the 
panel to identify the occupant. It had never been 
208 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 
removed, nor had any more important name-plate 
been placed beside it. 

Sometimes the janitor, in addressing him, would 
call him “Mr. Adolphe,” and sometimes “Mr. 
Woolf sen”; sometimes he would so far forget 
himself as to let his tongue slip half-way down 
“Old Sunshine,” bringing up at the “Sun” and sub- 
stituting either one of the foregoing in its place. 

The agent who collected his rent always ad- 
dressed him correctly. “If it was agreeable to Mr. 
Woolf sen, he would like to collect,” etc. Some- 
times it was agreeable to Mr. Woolf sen, and some- 
times it was not. When it was agreeable — this the 
janitor said occurred only when a letter came with 
a foreign postmark on it — the old painter would 
politely beg the agent to excuse him for a moment, 
and shut the door carefully in the agent’s face. 
Then would follow a hurried moving of easels and 
the shifting of a long screen across his picture. 
Then the agent would be received with a courteous 
bow and handed to a chair — a wreck of a chair, 
with the legs unsteady and the back wobbly, while 
the tenant would open an old desk, take a china 
209 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
pot from one of the cubby-holes, empty it of the 
contents, and begin to count out the money, smil- 
ing graciously all the time. When it was not agree- 
able to pay, the door was closed gently and silently 
in the agent’s face, and no amount of pounding 
opened it again — not that day, at least. 

Only Dalny knew what was behind that screen, 
and only Dalny divined the old man’s reasons for 
concealing his canvas so carefully ; but this was not 
until after weeks of friendly greeting, including 
certain attentions to the old sister, such as helping 
her up the stairs with a basket — an unusual occur- 
rence for her, and, of course, for him. This time 
it was a measure of coal and a bundle of wood 
that made it so heavy. 

“Thank you, sir,” she had said in her sweet, 
gentle voice, her pale cheeks and sad eyes turned 
toward him; “my brother will be so pleased. No, 
I can’t ask you in, for he is much absorbed these 
days, and I must not disturb him.” 

This little episode occurred only a few days after 
the incident of the interchange of the portions of 
milk, and was but another step to a foregone inti- 
210 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 
macy — so far as Dalny was concerned. Not that 
he was curious, or lacked society or advice. It was 
Dalny’s way to be gracious, and he rarely had 
cause to repent it. He did not pretend to any sys- 
tem of friendliness when meeting any feUow-lodger 
on the stairs. It began with a cheery “Good-morn- 
ing,” or some remark about the weather, or a hope 
that the water didn’t get in through the skylight 
and spoil any of his sketches. If a pleasant answer 
came in response, Dalny kept on, and in a week 
was lending brushes or tubes of color or a scuttle 
of coal, never borrowing anything in return; if 
only a gruff “Yes” or a nod of the head came 
in reply, he passed on down or up the stairs 
whistling as usual or humming some tune to him- 
self. This was Dalny’s way. 

At first the painter’s sobriquet of “Old Sun- 
shine” puzzled Dalny ; he saw him but seldom, but 
never when his face had anything sunny about it. 
It was always careworn and earnest, an eager, hun- 
gry look in his eyes. 

Botts, who had the next studio to Dalny, solved 
the mystery. 


211 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

“He’s crazy over a color scheme; gone daft on 
purples and yellows. I haven’t seen it — nobody has 
except his old sister. He keeps it covered up, but 
he’s got a 50X60 that he’s worked on for years. 
Claims to have discovered a palette that will make 
a man use smoked glass when his picture is hung 
on the line. That’s why he’s called ‘Old Sun- 
shine.’ ” 

Dalny made no reply, none that would encour- 
age Botts in his flippant view of the old painter. 
He himself had been studying that sam.e problem 
all his life; furthermore, he had always believed 
that sooner or later some magician would produce 
three tones — with harmonies so exact that a canvas 
would radiate light like a prism. 

The next day he kept his studio-door open and 
his ear unbuttoned, and when the old man’s steps 
approached his door on his return from his morn- 
ing walk — the only hour he ever went out — 
Dalny threw it wide and stepped in front of 
him. 

“Don’t mind coming in, do you?” Dalny 
laughed. “I’ve struck a snag in a bit of drapery 
212 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 
and can’t get an3rthing out of it. I thought you 
might help — ” And before the old fellow could 
realize where he was, Dalny had him in a chair 
before his canvas. 

“I’m not a figure-painter,” the old man said, 
simply. 

“That don’t make any difference. Tell me what’s 
the matter with that shadow — it’s lumpy and flat,” 
and Dalny pointed to a fold of velvet lying across 
a sofa, on which was seated the portrait of a stout 
woman — one of Dalny’s pot-boilers — the wife of 
a rich brewer who wanted a picture at a poor price 
— one which afterward made Dalny’s reputation, 
so masterful was the brushwork. The old Studio 
Building was full of just such customers, but not 
of such painters. 

“It’s of the old school,” said the painter. “I 
could only criticise it in one way, and that might 
offend you.” 

“Go on — what is the matter with it.?^” 

The old man rubbed his chin slowly and looked 
at Dalny under his bushy eyebrows. 

“I am afraid to speak. You have been very kind. 

213 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
My sister says you are always polite, and so few 
people are polite nowadays.” 

“Say what you please ; don’t worry about me. I 
learn something every day.” 

“No; I cannot. It would be cruel to tell you 
what I think, and Louise would not like it when 
she knew I had told you, and I must tell her. We 
tell each other everything.” 

“Is the color wrong.?” persisted Dalny. “I’ve 
got the gray-white of the sky, as you see, and 
the reflected light from the red plush of the sofa; 
but the shadows between — Would you try a touch 
of emerald green here.?” 

The old man had risen from his seat now and 
was backing away toward the door, his hat in his 
hand, his bald head and the scanty gray hairs about 
his temples glistening in the overhead light of the 
studio. 

“It would do you no good, my dear Mr. Dalny. 
Paint is never color. Color is an essence, a rhythm, 
a blending of tones as exquisite as the blending 
of sounds in the fall of a mountain-brook. Match 
each sound and you have its melody. Match each 
214 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 
tone and you have light. I am working — working. 
Good-morning.” 

His hand was now on the door-knob, his face 
aglow with an enthusiasm which seemed to mingle 
with his words. 

“Stop! Don’t go; that’s what I think myself,” 
cried Dalny. “Talk to me about it.” 

The old man dropped the knob and looked at 
Dalny searchingly. 

“You are honest with me?” 

“Perfectly.” 

“Then when I triumph you shall see ! — and you 
shall see it first. I will come for you; not yet — not 
yet — perhaps to-morrow, perhaps next month — 
but I will come I” and he bowed himself out. 

The faded sister was waiting for him at the top 
of the stairs. She had seen her brother mount the 
first flight and the fourth, all this by peering down 
between the banisters. Then he had disappeared. 
This, being unusual, had startled her. 

“You must have stopped somewhere, Adolphe,” 
she said, nervously. 


215 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

“Yes, Louise; the painter on the floor below 
called me.” 

“Is he poor, hke us 

“Poorer. We have the light beyond. He has 
nothing, and never will have.” 

“What did he want?” 

“A criticism.” 

“And you gave it?” 

“No, I could not. I had not the heart to tell 
him. He tries so hard. He is honest, but his work 
is hopeless.” 

“Like the man on the first floor, who uses the 
calcium light to show his pictures by?” 

“No, no; Mr. Dalny is a gentleman, not a 
cheat. He thinks, and would learn — ^he told me so. 
But he cannot see. Ah, not to see, Louise! Did 
you grind the new blue, dear? Yes — and quite 
smooth.” 

He had taken off his coat now, carefully, the 
lining being out of one sleeve. The sister hung it 
on a nail behind the door, and the painter picked 
up his palette and stood looking at a large canvas 
on an easel. Louise tiptoed out of the room and 
216 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 
closed the door of her own apartment. When her 
brother began work she always left him alone. 
Triumph might come at any moment, and even 
a word wrongly spoken might distract his thoughts 
and spoil everything. She had not forgotten — nor 
ever would — how, two years before, she had come 
upon him suddenly just as an exact tint had been 
mixed, and, before he could lay it on his canvas, 
had unconsciously interrupted him, and all the 
hours and days of study had to be done over 
again. Now they had a system: when she must 
enter she would cough gently ; then, if he did not 
hear her, she would cough again; if he did not 
answer, she would wait, sometimes without food, 
until far into the afternoon, when the daylight 
failed him. Then he would lay down his palette, 
covering his colors with water, and begin wash- 
ing his brushes. This sound she knew. Only then 
would she open the door. 

Botts had given Dalny the correct size of the 
canvas, but he had failed to describe the picture 
covering it. It was a landscape showing the sun 
setting behind a mountain, the sky reflected in a 
217 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
lake; in the foreground was a stretch of meadow. 
The sky was yellow and the mountain purple; the 
meadow reddish brovm. In the centre of the can- 
vas was a white spot the size of a pill-box. This 
was the sun, and the centre of the color scheme. 
Radiating from this patch of white were thou- 
sands of little pats of chrome yellow and vermihon, 
divided by smaller pats of blue. The exact grada- 
tions of these tints were to produce the vibra- 
tions of light. One false note would destroy the 
rhythm; hence the hours of thought and of end- 
less trying. 

These colors were not to be bought at the ordi- 
nary shops. Certain rare oxides formed the basis 
of the yellows, while the filings of bits of turquoise 
pounded to flour were used in the blues. Louise 
did this, grinding the minerals by the hour, her 
poor thin hands moving the glass pestle over the 
stone slab. When some carefully thought-out tint 
was laid beside another as carefully studied, the 
combination meeting his ideal, he would spring 
from his seat, crying out: 

“Louise! Louise! Light! Light!” 

218 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE’’ 

Then the little woman would hurry in and stand 
entranced. 

“Oh ! so briUiant, Adolphe ! It hurts my eyes 
to look at it. See how it glows ! Ah, it will come !” 
and she would shade her wistful eyes with her hand 
as if the light from the flat canvas dazzled her. 
These were gala hours in the musty rooms at the 
top of the old Studio Building. 

Then there would come long days of depres- 
sion. The lower range of color was correct, but 
that over the right of the mountain and near the 
zenith did not pulsate. The fault lay in the poor 
quality of the colors or in the bad brushes or the 
sky outside. The faded sister’s face always fell 
when the trouble lay with the colors. Even the 
small measure of milk would then have to be given 
up until the janitor came bearing another letter 
with a foreign stamp. 

Dalny knew nothing of all this, nor did anyone 
else in the building — nothing positively of their 
home life — except from such outside indications as 
the size of the can of milk and the increasing shab- 
biness of their clothes. Dalny had suspected it and 
219 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
had tried to win their confidence in his impulsive 
way ; but all his advances had been met by a gentle, 
almost pathetic, reserve which was more insurmount- 
able than a direct repulse. He also wanted to learn 
something more of the old man’s methods. He had 
in his own earher student days known an old pro- 
fessor in Heidelberg who used to talk to him about 
violet and green, but he never got any farther 
than talk. Here was a man, a German^ too, perhaps 
— or perhaps a Swede — he could not tell from the 
name — some foreigner, anyhow — who was putting 
his theories into practice, and, more convincing 
still, was willing to starve slowly until they mate- 
rialized. 

Once he had cornered the old man on the stairs, 
and, throwing aside all duphcity, had asked him 
the straight question : 

“Will you show me your picture I showed you 
mine.” 

“Old Sunshine” raised his wide-brimmed hat 
from his head by the crown — it was too limp to 
be lifted in any other way — and said in a low 
voice ; 


220 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 

“Yes, when it is a picture; it is now only an 
experiment.” 

“But it will help me if I can see your work. I 
am but a beginner; you are a master.” 

The good-natured touch of flattery made no im- 
pression on the old man. 

“No,” he answered, replacing his hat and keep- 
ing on his way downstairs, “I am not a master. 
I am a man groping in the dark, following a light 
that beckons me on. It will not help you; it will 
hurt you. I will come for you; I have promised, 
remember. Neither my sister nor I ever break a 
promise. Good-moming !” And again the shabby 
hat was lifted. 

Dalny stood outside his own door listening to 
the old man’s steps growing fainter until they 
reached the street; then he resumed his work on 
the green dress and puffy red face of the brewer’s 
wife, correcting the errors he had made when she 
last sat for him, his mind unsatisfied, his curiosity 
all the more eager. 

As the winter came on, Dalny began to miss 
the tread of the old man outside his door. The old 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
sister never made any noise, so he never knew when 
she went up and down unless he happened to be 
on the stairs at the same moment. He knew the old 
man was at work, because he could hear his cease- 
less tramp before his easel — walking up to his pict- 
ure, laying on a pat of color, and walking back 
again. He himself had walked miles — ^had been do- 
ing it the day before in his efforts to give “carry- 
ing” quahty to the shadow under the nose of the 
brewer’s better half. 

“I do not see your brother any more,” Dalny 
had said to her one morning, after meeting her 
by accident outside his door carrying a basket with 
a cloth over it. 

“No,” she answered; “no; he cannot spare a 
moment these days. He hardly takes time to eat, 
and I do all the errands. But he is very happy.” 
Here her face broke into a smile. “Oh, so happy! 
We both are ” 

“And is the great picture finished.?^” he inter- 
rupted, with a movement as if to relieve her of 
the weight of the basket. 

“Almost. . . . Almost. . . . Adolphe 

222 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 
will tell you when it is ready. No — ^please, good 
Mr. Dalny — it is not heavy. But I thank you all 
the same for wanting to help me. It is a little hot 
soup for Adolphe. He is very fond of hot soup, 
and they make it very nice at the comer.” 

The day following this interview Dalny heard 
strange noises overhead. The steady tramping had 
ceased; the sounds were as if heavy furniture was 
being moved. Then there would come a pattering 
of lighter feet running in and out of the connect- 
ing room. Then a noise as if scrubbing was being 
done; he thought at one time he heard the splash 
of water, and even looked up at his own ceiling 
as if expecting a leak. 

Suddenly these unusual sounds ceased, the old 
man’s door was flung open, a hurried step was 
heard on the upper stairway, and a sharp knock 
fell upon his own door. 

Dalny opened it in the face of the old man. He 
was bareheaded, his eyes blazing with excitement, 
his face flushed as if by some uncontrollable joy. 

“Come — quick !” he cried ; “we are all ready. It 
w^as perfected this morning. We have been putting 
22S 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
things in order for you, for we do not ever have 
guests. But you must be careful — ^your eyes are 
not accustomed, perhaps, and ” 

Dalny darted back without listening to the old 
man’s conclusion, and threw on his coat. The 
faded sister was upstairs, and he must be pre- 
sentable. 

“And you like your picture,” burst out 
Dalny, as he adjusted his collar and cuffs — part 
of the old man’s happiness had reached his own 
heart now. 

“Like it.? It is not something to like, Mr. 
Dalny. It is not a meal; it is a religion. You are 
in a fog, and the sun bursts through; you are in 
a tunnel, and are swept out into green fields; you 
grope in the dark, and an angel leads you to the 
light. You do not ‘like’ things then — you thank 
God on your knees. Louise has done nothing 
but cry.” 

These words came in shortened sentences divided 
by the mounting of each step, the two hurrying 
up the stairs, “Old Sunshine” ahead, Dalny fol- 
lowing. 

^24 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 

The sister was waiting for them at the open 
door. She had a snow-white kerchief over her shoul- 
ders and a quaint cap on her head, evidently her 
best. Her eyes, still red from weeping, shone like 
flashes of sunshine through falling rain. 

“Keep him here, Louise, until I get my umbrella 
— I am afraid. No ; stay till I come for you — ” 
this to Dalny, who was, in his eagerness, peering 
into the well-swept, orderly looking room. “Shut 
your eyes until I tell you — quick ! under this 
umbrella” (he had picked it up just inside the 
door). 

Dalny suffered himself to be led into the room, 
his head smothered under the umbrella, the old 
man’s hand firmly grasping his as if the distance 
between the door and the masterpiece was along 
the edge of an abyss. 

“Now!” cried the old man, waving the umbrella 
aside. 

Dalny raised his eyes, and a feeling of faintness 
came over him. Then a peculiar choking sensation 
crept into his throat. For a moment he did not and 
could not speak. The thousands of little patches 
225 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
of paint radiating from the centre spot were but 
so many blurs on a flat canvas. The failure was 
pathetic, but it was complete. 

The old man was reading his face. The faded 
sister had not taken her eyes from his. 

“It does not dazzle you! You do not see the 
vibrations 

“I am getting my eyes accustomed to it,” stam- 
mered Dalny. “I cannot take it all in at once.” 
He was hunting around in his mind for something 
to say — something that would not break the old 
man’s heart. 

“No! You cannot deceive me. I had hoped bet- 
ter things of you, Mr. Dalny. It is not your fault 
that you cannot see.” 

The old man had crossed to the door of his 
studio, had thrown it open, and stood as if waiting 
for Dalny to pass out. 

“Yes, but let me look a little longer,” protested 
Dalny. The situation was too pathetic for him 
to be offended. 

“No — ^no — please excuse us — we are very happy, 
Louise and I, and I would rather you left us alone. 

226 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 


I will come for you some other time — when my 
picture has been sent away. Please forgive my sis- 
ter and me, but 'please go away.” 

Weeks passed before Dalny saw either one of 
the old people again. He watched for them, his 
door ajar, listening to every sound; but if they 
passed up and down the stairs, they did so when 
he was out or asleep. He had noticed, too, that all 
was stiU overhead, except a light tread which he 
knew must be the faded sister’s. The heavier foot- 
fall, however, was silent. 

One morning the janitor opened Dalny’s door 
without knocking and closed it softly behind him. 
He seemed laboring under some excitement. 

“He’s up at St. Luke’s Hospital; they took him 
there last night,” he said in a whisper, jerking his 
thumb toward the ceiling. 

“Who.?” 

“ ‘Old Sunshine.’ ” 

“Crazy?” 

“No; ill with fever; been sick for a week. Not 
bad, but the doctor would not let him stay here.” 
227 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


“Did the sister go?” There was a note of alarm 
in Dalny’s voice. 

“No, she is upstairs. That’s why I came. I 
don’t think she has much to eat. She won’t let me 
in. Maybe you can get her to talk to you ; she likes 
you — she told me so.” 

Dalny laid down his palette, tiptoed hurriedly 
up the stairs and knocked gently. There was no 
response. Then he knocked again, this time much 
louder, and waited. He heard the rusthng of a 
skirt, but there was no other sound. 

“It’s Mr. Dalny, madam,” he said in the kind- 
est, most sympathetic voice that ever came out of 
his throat. 

The door opened softly, and her face peered 
through the crack. Tears were in her eyes — old 
and new tears — following one another down her 
furrowed cheeks. 

“He is gone away; they took him last night, 
Mr. Dalny.” Her voice broke, but she still kept 
the edge of the door in her trembhng hand. 

“Yes; I have just heard about it. Let me come 
in, please; I want to help you. You are all alone.” 

228 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 

Her grasp slackened, and Dalny stepped in. 
The room was in some confusion. The bed where 
her brother had been ill was still in disorder, the 
screen that had concealed it pushed to one side. 
On a table by his easel were the remains of a meal. 
The masterpiece still stared out from its place. 
The sister walked to a lounge and sat down. 

“Tell me the truth,” Dalny said, seating himself 
beside her. “Have you any money 
“No; our letter has not come.” 

“What do you expect to do.^” 

“I must sell something.” 

“Let me lend you some money. I have plenty, 
for I shall get paid for my picture to-morrow; 
then you can pay it back when yours comes.” 

“Oh, you are so kind, but we must sell something 
of our own. We owe a large sum; the rent is two 
months due, and there are other things, and 
Adolphe must have some comforts. No, I am not 
offended, but Adolphe would be if he knew.” 

Dalny looked into space for a moment, and 
asked, thoughtfully, “How much do you owe.?” 
“Oh, a great deal,” she answered, simply. 

229 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


‘‘What things will you sell?” At least he could 
help her in this. 

The faded old lady looked up at Dalny and 
pointed to the masterpiece. 

“It breaks our heart to send it away, but there 
is nothing else to do. It will bring, too, a great 
price; nothing else we possess will bring as much. 
Then we will have no more poverty, and someone 
may buy it who will love it, and so my brother 
will get his reward.” 

Dalny swept his eye around. The furniture was 
of the shabbiest; pictures and sketches tacked to 
the wall, but experiments in “Old Sunshine’s” pet 
theories. Nothing else would bring anything. And 
the masterpiece! That, he knew, would not bring 
the cost of its frame. 

“Where will you send it to be sold — to an art 
dealer?” Dalny asked. He could speak a good 
word for it, perhaps, if it should be sent to some 
dealer he knew. 

“No ; to a place in Cedar Street, where Adolphe 
sold some sketches his brother painters gave him 
in their student days. One by Achenbach — Oswald, 
2S0 


^‘OLD SUNSHINE” 


not Andreas — brought a large sum. It was a great 
help to us. I have written the gentleman who keeps 
the auction-room, and he is to send for the picture 
to-morrow, and it will be sold in his next picture 
sale. Adolphe was willing; he told me to do it. 
‘Someone will know,’ he said; ‘and we ought not 
to enjoy it all to ourselves.’ Then again, the prob- 
lem has been solved. All his pictures after this 
will be full of beautiful light.” 

The auction-room was crowded. There was to 
be a sale of French pictures, some by the men of 
’30 and some by the more advanced impressionists. 
Many out-of-town buyers were present, a few of 
them dealers. Dalny rubbed his hands together in 
a pleased way when he looked over the audience 
and the collection. It was quite possible that some 
connoisseur newly made would take a fancy to 
the masterpiece, confounding it with some one of 
the pictures of the Upside-down School — pictures 
looking equally well whichever way they might be 
hung. 

The selling began. 


^31 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

A Corot brought $2,700; a Daubigny, $940; 
two examples of the reigning success in Paris, 
$1,100. Twenty-two pictures had been sold. 

Then the masterpiece was placed on the easel. 

“A Sunrise. By Adolphe Woolf sen of Diissel- 
dorf,” called out the auctioneer. “What am I 
offered.'^” 

There came a pause, and the auctioneer repeated 
the announcement. 

A man sitting by the auctioneer, near enough 
to see every touch of the brush on “Old Sun- 
shine’s” picture, laughed, and nudged the man 
next to him. Several others joined in. 

Then came a voice from behind: 

“Five dollars !” 

The auctioneer shrank a little, a pained, sur- 
prised feeling overspreading his face, as if some- 
one had thrown a bit of orange-peel at him. Then 
he went on : 

“Five dollars it is, gentlemen. Five — five — ^five !” 
Even he, with all the tricks of his trade at his 
fingers’ ends, could not find a good word to say 
for “Old Sunshine’s” masterpiece, 

232 


“OLD SUNSHINE” 

Dalny kept shifting his feet in his uneasiness. 
His hands opened and shut; his throat began to 
get dry. Then he broke loose : 

“One hundred dollars !” 

The auctioneer’s face lighted up as suddenly 
as if the calcium light of the painter whom 
“Old Sunshine” despised had been thrown 
upon it. 

“I have your bid, Mr. Dalny [he knew him] — 
one hundred — hundred — hundred — one — one 
— ^third and last call!” 

Dalny thought of the gentle old face waiting 
at the top of the stairs, and of the old man’s 
anxious look as he lay on his pillow. The auc- 
tioneer had seen Dalny’s eager expression and at 
once began to address an imaginary bidder on the 
other side of the room — ^his clerk, reaUy. 

“Two hundred — two hundred — two — two — 
two ” 

“Three hundred!” shouted Dalny. 

Again the clerk nodded ; 

“Four— four!” 

“Five!” shouted Dalny. This was all the money 

23S 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
he would get in the morning excepting fifty dol- 
lars — and that he owed for his rent. 

“Five — five — five! — third and last call! SOLD! 
and to you, Mr. Dalny! Gentlemen, you seem to 
have been asleep. One of the most distinguished 
painters of our time is the possessor of this pict- 
ure, which only shows that it takes an artist to 
pick out a good thing!” 

She was waiting for him in her room, her own 
door ajar this time. He had promised to come back, 
and she was then to go to the hospital and tell 
the good news to her brother. 

With his heart aglow with the pleasure in store 
for her, he bounded up the stairs, both hands held 
out, his face beaming: 

“Wonderful success ! Bought by a distinguished 
connoisseur who won’t let the auctioneer give his 
name.” 

“Oh, I am so happy!” she answered. “That is 
really better than the money; and for how much, 
dear Mr. Dalny 

“Five hundred dollars!” 

2S4! 


‘‘OLD SUNSHINE” 


The faded sister’s face fell. 

“I thought it would bring a great deal more, 
but then Adolphe will be content. It was the lowest 
sum he mentioned when he decided to sell it. Will 
you go with me to tell him? Please do.” 

In the office of the hospital Dalny stopped to 
talk to the doctor, the sister going on up to the 
ward where “Old Sunshine” lay. 

“Is he better?” asked Dalny. “He is a friend 
of mine.” 

The doctor tapped his forehead significantly 
with his forefinger. 

“Brain trouble?” asked Dalny in a subdued tone. 

“Yes.” 

“Will he get weU?” 

The doctor shook his head discouragingly. 

“How long will he last?” 

“Perhaps a week — ^perhaps not twenty-four 
hours.” 

The faded sister now entered. Her face was 
still smiling — ^no one had yet told her about her 
brother. 

“Oh, he is so happy, Mr. Dalny.” 

2S5 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
“And you told him?” 

“Yes! Yes!” 

“And what did he say?” 

“He put his arms around me and kissed me, 
and then he whispered, ‘Oh! Louise, Louise! the 
connoisseur knew !’ ” 


236 


A POT OF JAM 


I 


1 

> V 




4 




V 


f 

) 


4 







A POT OF JAM 


After a fit of choking that could be heard all 
over the train the left lung of the locomotive gave 
out. I had heard her coughing up the long grade 
and had begun to wonder whether she would pull 
through, when she gave a wheeze and then a jerk, 
and out went her cylinder head. 

Boston was four hours away and time of value 
to me. So it was to all the other passengers, judg- 
ing from the variety and pungency of their re- 
marks — all except one, an old lady who had 
boarded the train at a station near the foot of the 
long grade and who occupied a seat immediately 
in front of mine. 

Such a dear old lady ! plump and restful, a gray 
worsted shawl about her shoulders and a reticule 
on her arm. An old lady with a round rosy face 
framed in a hood-of-a-bonnet edged with ruffles, 
239 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
the strings tied under her chin, her two soft, human, 
kindly eyes peering at you over her gold-rimmed 
spectacles resting on the end of her nose. The sort 
of an old lady that you would like to have had for 
a mother provided you never had one of your own 
that you could remember — so comforting would 
have been her touch. 

As the delay continued, the passengers made re- 
marks. Some I cannot remember; others I cannot 
print. 

One man in unblacked boots, with a full set of 
dusting-brush whiskers sticking up above his collar- 
less shirt, smooth-shaven chin, red face, and a shock 
of iron-gray hair held in place by a slouch hat, said 
he’d “be doggoned if he ever knowed where he was 
at when he travelled on this road.” 

Another — a man with a leather case filled with 
samples on the seat beside him — a restless, loud- 
talking man, remarked that “they ought to build 
a cemetery at both ends of the road, and then the 
mourners could go in a walk and everybody would 
be satisfied, instead of trying to haul trains loaded 
with live people that wanted to get somewheres.” 

240 


A POT OF JAM 

Another — a woman this time, in a flower-cov- 
ered hat and shiny brown silk dress, new, and evi- 
dently the pride of her heart from the care she took 
of it — one of those crisp, breezy, outspoken women 
of forty-five or fifty — slim, narrow-faced, keen- 
eyed, with a red — quite red — nose that would one 
day meet an ambitious upturned chin, and straight, 
firm mouth, the under lip pressed tight against the 
upper one when her mind was made up — remarked 
in a voice that sounded like a buzz-saw striking a 
knot: 

“You ain’t tellin’ me that we’re goin’ to miss the 
train at Springfield, be ye?” 

This remark being addressed to the car as a 
whole — no single passenger having vouchsafed any 
such information — ^was received in dead silence. 

The arrival of the conductor, wiping the greaise 
and grime from his hands with a wad of cotton- 
waste, revived hope for a moment and encouraged 
an air of gayety. 

He was a gentlemanly conductor, patient, accus- 
tomed to be abused and brief in his replies. 

“Maybe one hour ; maybe six.” 

241 


AT CLOSE RANGE 


The gayety ceased. 

The bewhiskered man said, “Well, I’ll be gosh- 
durned !” 

The sample-case man said, “ 

” (You can fill thatmp at your leisure.) 

The woman in the brown silk rose to her feet, 
gathered her skirts carefully in her hand, skewered 
the conductor with her eye, and said: “You’ve gone 
and sp’ilt my day, that’s what you’ve gone and 
done and, receiving no reply, crossed the aisle and 
plumped herself down in the overturned seat oppo- 
site the dear old lady, adding, as she shook out 
her skirt: 

“Dirt mean, ain’t it.?” 

The Dear Old Lady looked at the Woman in 
Brown, nodded in kindly assent, gazed at the con- 
ductor over her spectacles until he had closed the 
door, and said in a low, sweet voice that was ad- 
dressed to nobody in particular, and yet which per- 
meated the car like a strain of music : 

“Well, if we’re going to be here for six hours I 
guess I’ll knit.” 

Just here I began to be interested. The philos- 

24>2 


A POT OF JAM 


ophy of the dear woman’s life had evidently made 
her proof against such trivialities. Six hours ! What 
difference did it make.? There was a flavor of the 
Manana por la manana of the Spaniard and the 
Dolce far niente of the Italian in her acceptance of 
the situation that appealed to me. Another sun 
would rise on the morrow as beautiful as the one 
we had to-day; why worry over its setting? Let 
us eat, drink, and be merry — or knit. It was all the 
same to her. 

I immediately wanted to know more of this pas- 
senger — a desire that did not in the slightest degree 
extend to any other inmate of the car. And yet 
there were restrictions and barriers which I could 
not pass. Not occupying the seat beside her or 
opposite her, but the one behind her, I, of course, 
was not on terms of such intimacy as would make it 
possible for me to presume upon her privacy. She 
was occupying her own house, as it were, framed in 
between two seat-backs turned to face each other, 
giving her the use of four seats — one of which had 
been usurped by the Woman in Brown. I had my 
one seat with my bag beside me, giving me the 
US 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
privileges of two sittings. Between us, of course, 
was the back of her own seat, over which I looked 
and studied her back hair and bonnet and shawl 
and — ^knitting. 

Under the circumstances I could no more intrude 
upon the Dear Old Lady’s privacy than upon a 
neighbor’s who lived next door to me but whom I 
did not know and was separated from me only by 
an eight-inch brick wall. The conventionalities of 
life enforce these conditions. When, therefore, the 
Dear Old Lady informed me and the car that she 
would “knit,” I got myself into position to watch 
the operation ; not obtrusively, not with any inten- 
tion of prying into her private life, but just be- 
cause — well, just because I couldn’t help it. 

There was something about her, somehow, that I 
could not resist. I knew a Dear Old Lady once. She 
wasn’t so stout as this old lady and her eyes were 
not brown, but blue, and her hair smooth as gray 
satin and of the same color. I can see her now as 
I write, the lamplight falling on her ivory needles 
and tangle of white yarn — and sometimes, even 
now, I think I hear her voice. 


244 } 


A POT OF JAM 

The Dear Old Lady before me felt in her pocket, 
pulling up her overskirt and fumbling about for a 
mysterious pouch that was tied around her waist, 
perhaps, and in which she carried her purse, and 
then she pinched her reticle and said to herself — 
I was so near I could hear every word: “Oh, I 
guess I put it in the bag” — and she leaned over 
and began unfastening the clasps of an old-fash- 
ioned carpet-bag, encased in a pocket-edition of a 
linen duster, which rested on the seat in front of her 
and beside the Woman in Brown, who drew her im- 
maculate, never-to-be-spotted silk skirt out of the 
way of any possible polluting touch. 

I craned my head. Somehow I could hardly wait 
to see what kind of knitting she would take out — 
whether it was a man’s stocking or a baby’s mitten 
or a pair of wee socks, or a stripe to sew in an 
afghan to put over somebody’s bed. What stories 
could be written about the things dear old ladies 
knit — what stories they are, really! In every ball 
of yarn there is a thread that leads from one heart 
to another : to some big son or fragile daughter, or 
to the owner of a pair of pink toes that won’t stay 
M5 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
covered no matter how close the crib — or to' a 
chubby-faced boy with frost-tipped ears or cheeks. 

First came the ball of yarn — just plain gray 
yarn — and then two steel needles, and then 

Then the Dear Old Lady stopped, and an expres- 
sion of blank amazement overspread her sweet face 
as her fingers searched the interior of the bag. 

“Why,” she said to herself, “why! Well! You 
don’t tell me that — well ! I never knew that to hap- 
pen before. Oh, isn’t that dreadful! Well, I never V' 
Here she drew out an unfinished gray yarn stock- 
ing. “Just look at it! Isn’t it awful!” 

The Woman in Brown sprang to her feet and 
switched her dress close to her knees. 

“What is it.?” she cried. 

“Jam!” answered the old lady. 

“Jam ! You don’t mean to say ” 

“That’s just what it is. Blackberry jam, that my 
Lizzie put up for John just before I left home and 
— oh, isn’t it too bad ! It’s streaming all over the 
seat and running down on the floor ! Oh my ! my !” 

The Woman in Brown gave a bound and was out 
in the aisle. “Well, I should think,” she cried in- 
246 


A POT OF JAM 

dignantly, “that you’d had sense enough to know 
better than to carry jam in a thing like that. I 
ain’t got none on me, hev I?” 

The Dear Old Lady didn’t reply. She was too 
much absorbed in her own misfortunes to notice her 
companions. 

“I told Lizzie,” she continued, “just ’fore I left, 
that she oughter put it in a basket, but she ’lowed 
that it had a tin cap and was screwed tight, and 
that she’d stuff it down in my clothes and it would 
carry all right. I ain’t never left it out of my hand 
but once, and then I give it to the man who helped 
me up the steps. He must have set it down sudden 
like.” 

As she spoke she drew out from the inside of the 
bag certain articles of apparel which she laid on the 
seat. One — evidently a neck handkerchief — looked 
like a towel that had just wiped off the face of a 
boy who had swallowed the contents of the jar. 

The Woman in Brown was in the aisle now exam- 
ining her skirts, twisting them round and round in 
search of stray bits of jam. The Dear Old Lady was 
still at work in her bag, her back shielding its 
247 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
smeared contents. Trickling down upon the floor 
and puddling in the aisle and under the seats on the 
opposite side of the car ran a sticky fluid that the 
woman avoided stepping upon with as much care as 
if it had been a snake. 

I started forward to help, and then I suddenly 
checked myself. What could I do ? The black- 
berry jam had not only soaked John’s stockings, 
but it had also permeated. Well, the Dear Old 
Lady was travelling and evidently on the way to 
see John — her son, no doubt — and to stay all 
night. No, it was beyond question; I could not 
be of the slightest use. Then again, there was a 
woman present. Whatever help the Dear Old Lady 
needed should come from her. 

‘‘You ain’t got no knife, I suppose ?” I heard the 
Woman in Brown say. “If you had you could 
scrape most of it off.” 

“No,” answered the Dear Old Lady. “Have 
you?” 

“Well, I did hev, but I don’t just know where it 
is. It would gorm that up, too, maybe, if I did 
find it.” 


248 


A POT OF JAM 


“No, I guess the best way is to try and wash it 
off. I’ll get rid of this anyway,” the Dear Old Lady 
answered; and out came the treacherous jar with 
the crack extending down its side, its metal top 
loose, the whole wrapped in yellow paper — all of 
which she dropped out of the open window. 

During this last examination the Woman in 
Brown stood in the aisle, her skirts above her ankles. 
It wasn’t her bag, or her stockings, or her jam. 
She had paid her fare and was entitled to her seat 
and its surrounding comforts : I had a good view of 
her face as she stood in front of me, and I saw what 
was passing in her mind. To this air of being im- 
posed upon, first by the railroad and now by this 
fellow-passenger, was added a certain air of dis- 
gust — a contempt for any one, however old, who 
could be so stupid and careless. The little wrinkles 
that kept puckering at the base of her red lobster- 
claw of a nose — it really looked like one — helped 
me in this diagnosis. Its shape prevented her from 
turning it up at anybody, and wrinkling was all 
that was left. Having read her thoughts as reflected 
in her face, I was no longer surprised that she con- 
^49 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
tmued standing without offering in any way to 
help her companion out of her dilemma. 

The Dear Old Lady’s examination over, and the 
intricacies of her bag explored and the comers of 
certain articles of apparel lifted and immediately 
replaced again, she said to herself, with a sigh of 
relief : 

‘‘Ain’t but one stocking tetched, anyhow. Most 
of it’s gone into my shoes — ^yes, that’s better. Oh, 
I was so scared !” 

“Everything stuck up, ain’t it?” rasped the 
Woman. She hadn’t taken her seat yet. It seemed to 
me she could get more comfort out of the Old 
Lady’s misery standing up. 

“Well, it might ha’ been worse, but I ain’t goin’ 
to worry a mite over it. I’ll go to the cooler and 
wash up what I can, and the rest’s got to wait till 
I get to John’s,” she said in her sweet, patient way, 
as she gathered up the bag and its contents and 
made her way to the wash-basin. 

The car relapsed into its former dull condition. 
Those of the passengers who were not experts and 
whose advice, if taken, would have immediately 
250 


A POT OF JAM 

replaced the cylinder-head and sent the train in on 
time, were picking flowers outside the track, but 
close enough to the train to spring aboard at the 
first sign of life in the motive-power. Every now 
and then there would come a back-thrust of the 
car and a bumping into the one behind us. Some 
scientist who had spent his life in a country store 
hereupon explained to a mechanical engineer who 
had a market garden out of Springfield (I learned 
this from their conversation) that “it was the b’iler 
that acted that way; the engineer was lettin’ off 
steam and the jerk come when he raised the safety- 
valve.” 

A brakeman now opened the door nearest the 
water-cooler, passed the old lady washing up, ran 
amuck through a volley of questions fired at him 
in rapid succession, and slammed the other door 
behind him without replying to one of them. In 
this fusillade the Woman in Brown, who had now 
'.turned over a flower-picking passenger’s seat in 
addition to her own, had managed her tongue with 
the rapidity and precision of a Gatling gun. 

One of those mysterious rumors, picked up from 

251 


AT CLOSE RANGE 

some scrap of conversation heard outside, now 
drifted through the car. It conveyed the informa- 
tion that another engine had been telegraphed for 
and would be along soon. This possibility the 
Sample-Case Man demolished by remarking in his 
peculiar vernacular — unprintable, all of it — that it 
was ten miles to the nearest telegraph station and it 
would take two hours to walk it. 

The bottom having dropped out of this slight 
hope, the car relapsed into its dull monotony. No 
statement now of any kind would be beheved by 
anybody. 

During this depression I espied the Dear Old 
Lady making her way down the aisle. No trace of 
anxiety was on her face. The bag had resumed its 
former appearance, its linen duster buttoned tight 
over its ample chest. 

The Woman in Brown was waiting for her, her 
feet up on the flower-picking passenger’s seat, her 
precious brown silk tucked in above her shoes. 

“Quite a muss, wam’t it ” she said with rather a 
gleeful tone, as if she rejoiced in the Old Lady’s 
punishment for her stupidity. 

252 


A POT OF JAM 


“Yes, but it’s all right now. It soaked through 
my shoes and went all over my cap, and — ” Here 
she bent her head and whispered into the Woman’s 
ear. I realized then how impossible it would have 
been for me to have rendered the slightest assist- 
ance. 

She had taken her seat now and had laid the bag 
in its original position on the cushion in front of 
her. My heart had gone out to her, but I was power- 
less to help. Once or twice I conned over in my mind 
an expression of sympathy, but I could not decide 
on just what I ought to say and when I ought to 
say it, and so I kept silent. I should not have 
felt that way about the Woman in Brown, who 
sat across from me, her two feet patting away on 
the seat cushion as if to express her delight that 
she had escaped the catastrophe (toes express joy 
oftener than fingers, if we did but know it). It 
would not have taken me five seconds to express 
my opinion of her — with my toes had she been 
a man. 

The Dear Old Lady began now to rearrange her 
toilet, drawing up her shawl, tightening the strings 
253 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
of her comfortable bonnet, wiping the big gold 
spectacles on a bit of chamois from her reticule. 
I watched every movement. Somehow I could not 
keep my eyes from her. Then I heard her say in 
a low voice to herself : 

“Well, the toe wam’t stained — I guess I can 
work on that.” 

Out came the needles and yarn again, and the 
wrinkled fingers settled down to their work. No 
more charming picture in the world than the one 
now before me! 

The Woman in Brown held a different opinion. 
Craning her head and getting a full view of the 
Dear Old Lady peacefully and comfortably at 
work, all her sorrows ended, she snapped out: 

“I s’pose ye don’t know I can’t put my feet down 
nowheres. It’s all a muck round here; you seed it 
when the jar fust busted, ’cause I heard ye say so. 
I been ’spectin’ ye’d clean it up somehow.” 

Down went the knitting and up she got. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll get a newspaper and 
wipe it up. I hope you didn’t get none on your 
clothes.” 


254 


A POT OF JAM 

“Oh, I took care o’ that! This is a brand-new 
dress and I ain’t wore it afore. I don’t get nothin’ 
on my clothes — I ain’t that kind.” This last came 
with a note of triumph in her voice. 

I watched the Dear Old Lady lean over the thin 
axe-handle ankles of the Woman in Brown, mop up 
a little pool of jam- juice, tuck the stained paper 
under the crossbar, and regain her seat. I started 
up to help, but it was all over before I could 
interfere. 

The Dear Old Lady resumed her knitting. The 
Woman in Brown put down her feet ; her rights had 
been recognized and she was satisfied. I kept up 
my vigil. 

Soon a movement opposite attracted me. I raised 
my eyes. The Woman in Brown, with her eye on the 
Dear Old Lady, was stealthily opening a small 
f paper bundle. She had the air of a boy watching 
a policeman. The paper parcel contained a red nap- 
kin, a dinner knife, and two fat sandwiches stream- 
ing with butter. 

“Oh, you brought your lunch with you, did ye.?” 
remarked the Dear Old Lady, who had unex- 
255 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
pectedly raised her eyes from her knitting and at 
the wrong moment. 

“Well, jes’ a bite. I’d offer ye some, but I heard 
ye say that you were goin’ to eat dinner with your 
son. That’s so, ain’t it.^” 

“Yes, that’s so.” 

The needles kept on their course, the Dear Old 
Lady’s thoughts worked in with every stitch. It 
was now twelve o’clock, and Boston hours away. 
John would dine late if he waited for his old mother. 

The red napkin had now been laid on the seat 
cushion and the sandwiches placed side by side in 
fuU sight of the car. Concealment was no longer 
necessary. 

“I don’t s’pose ye left any water in the cooler, 
did ye.f^” 

“Oh, plenty,” came the reply, the needles still 
plying, the dear face fixed on their movement. 

“Well, then, I guess before I eat I’ll get a cup,” 
and she covered the luncheon with the brown paper 
and passed down the aisle. 

During her brief absence several important in- 

256 


A POT OF JAM 


cidents took place. First there came a jerk that felt 
for a moment like a head-on collision. This was a 
new locomotive, which had been sent to our relief, 
butting into the rear car. Then followed a rush of 
passengers, flower-pickers, mechanical engineers, 
scientists, sample-case man, and, last, the man 
with the dusting-brush whiskers. He paused for a 
moment, located his seat by his umbrella in the rack 
overhead, picked up the paper parcel, transferred 
it to the other seat, the one the woman in Brown 
had just left, tilted forward the back, and sat 
down. 

When he had settled himself and raised his head, 
the Woman in Brown stood over him looking into 
his eyes, an angry expression on her face. She held 
a cup of water in her hand. 

“My seat, ain’t it.?^” he blurted out. 

“Yes, ’spec’ it is,” she snarled back, “long as 
you want it.” And she gathered her skirts carefully, 
edged into the reduced space of her former seat, 
laid the cup of water on the sill of the window, and 
sat down as carefully as a hen adjusting herself 

257 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
to a nest, and, I thought, with precisely the same 
movement. 

A moment more and she leaned over the seat-back 
and said to the bewhiskered man : 

“Hand me that napkin and stuff, will ye?” 

The man moved his arm, picked up his news- 
paper, looked under it, and said : 

“It ain’t here.” 

“Well, I guess it is. I sot it there not more’n two 
minutes ago!” 

The man settled himself in his seat and began to 
read. 

“Look ’round there, will ye? Maybe it dropped 
on the floor.” 

“It ain’t on the floor. Guess I know a napkin 
when I see it.” This came with some degree of posi- 
tiveness. 

“Well, it ain’t here. I left it right where you’re 
a-sittin’ when I went and got this water. You ain’t 
eat it, hev ye?” She was still in her seat, her head 
twisted about, her face expressing every thought 
that crossed her mind. 

“No, I ain’t eat it. I ain’t no goat!” and the 

258 


A POT OF JAM 


man buried his face in his paper. For him the 
incident was closed. 

Here there came a still small voice floating out 
from the lips of the Dear Old Lady, slowly, one 
word at a time: 

“Ain’t you set on it.?” 

“Set on it! Whatr 

She was on her feet now, pulling her skirt 
around, craning her neck, her face getting whiter 
and whiter as the truth dawned upon her. 

“Oh, Lordy ! Jes’ look at it I However did I come 
to! Oh!” 

“Plere, take my handkerchief,” murmured the 
Dear Old Lady. “Let me help wipe it off.” And she 
laid down her knitting. 

Oh, but it was a beautiful stain ! A large, irreg- 
ular, map-like stain, with the counties plotted in 
bits of ham and the townships in smears of bread, 
with little rivers of butter running everywhere. 
One dear, beloved rill in an ectasy of delight had 
skipped a fold and was pushing a heap of butter 
ahead of it down a side plait. 

I hugged myself with the joy of it all. If it had 

259 


AT CLOSE RANGE 
only been a crock she had sat in, with sandwiches 
enough to supply a picnic! 

And the stain I 

That should have been as large as the State of 
Rhode Island 1 


260 


BOOKS BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

The Fortunes of 
Oliver Horn 

With full-page illustrations by 
Walter Appleton Clark 

l2mo. $1.50 

''It is long since more charming characters were 
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— New York Times Review. 

"It is in the character-drawing that the author has done 
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found than Margaret Grant, Sallie Horn, Oliver’s mother; 
and Lavinia Clendenning, the charming old spinster.” 

— Louisville Courier- Journal. 

"Full of warmth and life, while its characters find a 
place quickly in one’s heart.” — Chicago Record-Herald. 

" There will be a general unanimity, and that is in the 
cordiality with which readers will recommend it to their 
friends.” — New York Globe. 

" Its charm does not depend entirely upon the story, 
though that is perhaps as entertaining as any Mr. Smith 
has ever spun, but resides in its exquisite presentations of 
characters with whom it is a joy to become acquainted.” 

— The Detroit Free Press. 

" While he fills the book with old-fashioned sentiment, 
sketching more than one type of the old South, prejudiced 
and generous, natural and stately, exasperating and lov- 
able, he is always making us see the human weakness and 
strength of a young man who may be a Southerner, but 
is also in the best and widest sense an American.” 

— New York Tribune. 


BOOKS BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons 

The Wood Fire 
IN No. 3 

With eight illustrations in color 
by Alonzo Kimball. i2mo, $1.50 

“There are rollicking humor, pathos, romance, and 
dramatic quality in the stories, whose themes are suffi- 
ciently varied to suit all tastes.*’ — Chicago Evening Post. 

** None of Mr. Smith’s writings have shown more 
delightfully his spirit of genial kindliness and sympathetic 
humor.” — Boston Herald. 

** Full of holiday fellowship and good cheer.” 

— The Dial. 

“ The book is an artistic piece of literary work aside 
from its charm as a story.” — Toledo Blade. 

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Colonel Carters 
Christmas 

With eight illustrations in color 
by F. C. Yohn. lamo, $1.50 

“The story rings true.” Brooklyn Times. 

“ Altogether the best character ever created by Mr. 
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** The dear old Colonel claims our smiles and our love 
as simply and as whole-heartedly as ever, and we thank 
the author for another glimpse of him.” Li/e. 







